Having finally arrived in Oregon, our last major source of stress was finding a home. After all, we don't know the area, and, since I would primarily be working from home, we have hundreds of square miles of area to explore. Rachel and I have bought two homes together in Long Beach, and the search for each took us over a year. It felt like we might be living in rentals forever. Adding to the challenge, Rachel and I both have a different wish list for a new home. Clearly we have our work cut out for us.
As we were driving from Carlsbad to Phoenix, an amazing home came up for sale in the Portland suburb of West Linn. Great schools, a 3.5 acre lot, close-in commute, great looking house, and, maybe best of all, a gorgeous location on the Tualatin River. In fact, the listing noted that the owners had conducted a full ecological restoration of riparian habitat on the property, qualifying it for a special Oregon tax break. This house was truly too good to be true! Needless to say, we got right on the phone with our agent. We even talked about the possibility of having one of us fly up to Portland from Arizona to check out the home. Sadly, our agent informed us that the homeowners already had multiple full-price offers and that the property was as good as gone. We were crestfallen.
We spent the next few weeks mourning the loss while hoping beyond hope that another similar property might become available. I had diligently examined every home to come up for sale within 50 miles of Portland for over a year, and, though hope springs eternal, knew that it would be next to impossible to find something half as good.
Then, out of nowhere, we got a call from our agent on Thursday night to let us know that the house had fallen out of escrow and was back on the market. We checked it out Friday afternoon, and it was everything we'd hoped it would be. This morning, we put in our offer, and about two hours ago, we were notified that our offer had been accepted. There's still much to be done, and there's always the possibility of things falling through for one reason or another, but for right now ... we couldn't be happier.
!!
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