So We've Officially Looked at EVERY House in Barrington...

Our realtor congratulated us on settling on a specific location/town, and assured us that this was half the battle. We felt a new excitement at the fact that we had narrowed our search down, and we immediately updated our automated MLS search to send us homes only within a 1-1/2 mile radius of downtown Barrington.

With each new email of a property came the possibility that THIS was THE ONE. Over the next 6 weeks we checked our MLS search religiously and scheduled a home visit for every single possibility. I think our first Saturday our with the realtor included 9 homes, but none of them were quite right. This was just the beginning.

I signed us up on Redfin and Trulia in addition to MLS, and I often knew when a new property came on the market before our realtor did. If a new home did come up, we would do our best to schedule a home visit for that very same day. With such a small are to focus on and only so many homes on the market, we were determined to be quicker than any other buyer to put an offer in when we found the one.

About 3 weeks in we had our eye on one of the homes we had seen on our very first time out with the realtor. It was almost "just right", but it had one major flaw. It only had a one-car-garage with a long sloping driveway that was sure to make a popular sled hill for the neighborhood children, and would also be the spark to a nervous breakdown half way through the winter when we couldn't get our car up the icy pavement. In hindsight, It's clear that some desperation had started to set in, as we seriously contemplated making an offer. We visited the home about 4 or 5 times including 2 open house days. We even invited our parents to come see it. Finally, we realized it was just oo big of a deal breaker to make an offer and we moved on.

...But, there was nothing to move on to. We had looked at EVERY home in our search requirements and price range (and even outside of those a little) to no avail. We knew that time was not on our side since it was not Fall and the holidays just around the corner. It was becoming more and more unlikely to see new properties come on the market. No matter how ambitious and proactive we were, we simply could not make a house appear. We had nothing to do but wait...