To find your place

Have you ever wondered if you have grown up enough and accidentally asked yourself if it is a time to buy something big like a house? Yeah, me neither.

I don’t know how, but this turns out to be the right thing to do in the Autumn of 2015 (what the hell was I thinking?). We were two adults making good money and wondering how to screw our lives in just a second. And there it is – receipt for big, fat, fabulous trouble.

Looking for a new house in Sofia, Bulgaria is sort of adventure. And by adventure, I’m not referring to some fancy trip abroad… I’m pointing about a horror, drama and a bit of tragedy.  It’s kinda like the whole universe is against you. No matter how prepared you think you are, and no matter how many dreams you have dreamed about your brand new house, none of them will actually happen. Or at least none of them will happen just like that. Without blood, sweat, and tears. 

Here is the beginners’ list of what do to before losing your mind:

1. Make a list with details: what and where are you looking for and a budget.
2. Find a good real estate agent.
3. Do not waste your time in houses that are not even close to your list and budget (point 1) no matter if the agents are claiming else. There should be at least one thing you like in that place/house (or at least particular reason) before going anywhere to see something with ‘high potential’.
4. Brace yourself – it will take a while till you find the right place. Do not push and do not hurry.
5. Accept the fact that everything you like is not affordable to your budget…
6. … so, you’ll have to make compromises. Just make a list with absolute musts (together with point 1 above), and check only those places that are at least ok on paper.
7. And speaking of findings… when you find it – you’ll know it.

Before buying our new house, we made all the mistakes we could. I mean – if there was a list with mistakes to be done before finding the right place, we completed them all. We failed epically. Thousands of times. Here are a couple of examples: 

1. We fought. Every day. And night. And for the rest of the time. I don’t even quite remember what for, but basically – for everything. 
2. We were tired. Like really, really tired of everything (including but not limited to: revising all real estate postings every 2 hours, checking for any updates for the houses we were interested in, calling our agent, receiving calls from the agent, visiting numerous of places that are not even close to our wish list, negotiating with owners… and so on).
3. We accept the failure. Like 784 times.
4. We were sad for the houses that we liked but didn’t get (no matter the reasons).
5. We made a lot of calculations based on… well, nothing.

However, looking back to those days I accept that this disaster, that almost costs us our relationship, taught me a lot of things. I have paid a huge price for the experience I currently have. Now I own this knowledge and could (and most probably would) use it when the time is right.

Wonder what we were looking for? Well – most probably 90% of the people looking for a new house are having the same wishes – a brand new building, enough space, big terrace, nice view, high floor. We were looking in the close area where we were living in that moment (a year ago) and what we have found you may ask? Well, we are approximately 10 miles away of the area we were living (compromise 1), it is a brand new building, there is almost enough space (but we made compromise #2 with that as well), there is a terrace but we were looking for bigger one (compromise #3), there are quite good views (compromise #4) and no, we’re not on really high floor (just the third floor out of six, so compromise #5). However, when we found the building and enter the apartment we knew it. That was it – our place. It took us almost a year to find it. So, brace yourself and return to the list above and read it once again – you’ll need it.

PS. By the way, we found the place, cause we were in the neighborhood for our daily Starbucks coffee. Yep, we bought a house close to Starbucks, that’s it.