“Should we put an offer in on this place?”
It was not a rhetorical question. Amanda and I had been circling the same hard set of decisions about where we should live, what work would look like, and how much time we were willing to spend apart. There was also Eva, because any plan for us was a plan for the dog too.
The house was in the Hudson Valley, close enough to the life we already had but different enough to feel like a real move. I was excited. Amanda was more careful, which was useful because I can turn a possible project into an active project pretty fast.
I told her the important part plainly: if she hated it, she should tell me and I would not make the offer.
She did not hate it.
I asked if she was excited about trying to make it “the fun house for us.” Then I started moving.
The next several hours were lender paperwork, a financial statement, a preapproval letter, and questions about the appraisal contingency. The first letter needed to be updated. I sent the revised one and confirmed the offer again. It was the least romantic part of buying a possible fun house, but it was the part that made the offer real.
By that night, it was in.
I had a very clear picture of what the place could become. It was not just a house. It was somewhere Amanda and I could land together after years of schedules, travel, and work moving in different directions. Eva would have her part of it. Friends and family would have room. I would certainly find something in the building that needed to be rebuilt.
Three days later, someone else beat our offer.
That was it. No dramatic negotiation and no clever last move. We had gone from a question, to a pile of paperwork, to imagining an entire version of our life, and then back to looking.
I checked with the seller’s agent again near the end of the month. If the existing deal fell apart, our offer was still open. It had not fallen apart.
The fun house belonged to somebody else.