So that took a while.

What was it, November, when we started this hunt for a condo? No, that was when we brought on M., our agent. So I guess it must have been last fall, when we started going to Sunday open houses in an attempt to scout the market and learn what our money could buy us. But actually, you could go back even farther than that, considering I’d been soliciting advice from friends and co-workers as early as 2000. Whatever, it’s been a long time coming, and it’s about fucking time.

It all came to a head Friday evening. M., whose normally muted style involved sending me an email to notify me of properties, had called me a couple days earlier, alerting me to a condo that had just become available and, boy, it was going to fly. I agreed the description sounded appealing—possibly even perfect—but we’d been burned before. So with cautious optimism, we schedule for a showing Friday night, and held our breath.

All three of us—Sarah, myself and M.—knew within seconds that this was the place. Months and months of daily research had honed it so our attention was paid to the factors that really mattered: kitchen, deck, space, light, and of course location^3. This place had it all. Three bedrooms, an open kitchen/dining room area with an island (holy shit, an ISLAND), two sun rooms, in-unit laundry, a private deck and a huge common deck, and a beautiful neighborhood to boot. We were stoked.

Months of experience had also taught us a thing or two about dealing with selling agents, though apparently Sarah (and even M.) chose to forget it—they were acting like a pair of giddy schoolgirls who’ve just scored from row seats to see J.T. I kept them in check, we dutifully asked our questions, and promptly headed to the nearest coffee shop to write out the offer. M., who knew how rare of a situation this was (I may have been one of the, um, pickier clients), probably would have rather seen us write it up in the alleyway behind the building.

Saturday brought us the news of two other offers (I told you it was going to fly), forcing us to cut out the bullshit and give our best offer. Fortunately we hadn’t included any bullshit in the first place, a fact which helped our case, I think, when we went back a second time and upped our offer just a little bit—to $100 over list.

Saturday evening: Back. Forth. Back. Forth. It was mainly M. and the selling agent playing tennis, with Sarah and I called in once in a while to call a shot out-of-bounds. It wasn’t even the price that was being haggled, it was other little stuff that only people who understand ammortizing rates could decipher. Things were looking good.

Saturday night: to sleep with no answer.

Sunday: The sellers call M. at 2 p.m. with the good news. M., in a unusual display of casualness—or perhaps it was sadism—waits two hours to tell me the MOST IMPORTANT PIECE OF NEWS IN MY LIFE. I consider paying the sadism forward, and waiting two more hours to tell Sarah, but think better of it and call her. She’s ecstatic, and proceeds to lose all vocal abilities besides the phrase “We got the condo!” for the rest of the day.

All in all, it was pretty easy, if time-intenstive. Now, the tough part.