Hilltoppers

Front

Each time that I've purchased property (3 times previously over the last 10 years), when I've walked into the house, I knew it was the right one.  Didn't have to think about square feet, number of bedrooms, blah blah woof woof... I came I saw and I knew...

Top down

This most recent time (house #4) was no exception -- this past weekend, the Beloved and I went out shopping for for our new home here in Neptune (some people think of it as San Diego, but I'm choosing to live in Veronica Mars' universe tonight...).  On the second house that we looked at, we just knew that we had found a new SBBM (Stately Betz & Beloved Manor).  Bright, clean, quiet neighborhood -- it was, in fact in a neighborhood that we had targeted in our "lets think about where we want to live" days.  One of the really striking features is that its at the top of this fairly steep hill, and this home is on the tippy top row of houses -- theoretically on very clear days, we can see the ocean several miles away on the horizon. 

Backyard View

The house had just come on the market on Saturday and we made the offer on Sunday night, hoping that we might embody that old addage that "your first offer is your best offer".  We steeled ourselves through Monday waiting for word, and what we would do with the inevitable counter-offer (we had offered what we thought was "fair" -- which is sort of ridiculous when buying real estate in Southern California -- but left ourselves some wiggle room).  We got the word today that the sellers accepted -- no counter.  Amazing!  The cynical might say that we shoulda aimed a little lower, but I choose to think that we hit their "fair" price too, and they didn't want to scare off potential buyers with a counter.  Hooray!!