Saturday Morning arrived and Loren was excited. She knew every house they would be looking at was in their price range. Harm's college fund had grown over twenty years to about $750,000 but he had said they were not going to use more than half towards a home. He wanted some left over as savings and to buy furniture.
Harm had been unimpressed with the first four houses. To be honest Loren hated those more than Harm did. They were all in need of repair and major updates. They were the cheaper ones on the list. They took a break for lunch. Harm said "Loren if any of the others are like the ones from this morning mark them off the list. We will look at the nice ones only. Let's not waste our time anymore. If we have to we can spend a little more. I don't mind a couple projects to fix it up but I don't want to renovate the entire house."
"I agree to that Harm. Let's look at the last three on my list. The others are just as bad. The last one is in Falls Church, which would be great for work."
The next two houses Harm seemed to like but he wasn't ready to jump after them. They got to Loren's favorite last in Falls Church. It was a two story colonial. It had 6 bedrooms, an office, a gourmet kitchen, three car garage and four and half baths.
Harm kept his best poker face up while they wondered around the property. Loren was falling more in love with the house but was worried because Harm was stone faced. Eventually their realtor asked "what do you guys think?"
Harm said "It's perfect. We will put in an offer. The offer will be 30K off the list price because I can see we need new HVAC units. Or they can replace them with units we pick and it will be full price."
Loren's mouth hit the floor. Harm loved the house and he had kept a stone face the whole time. She punched him on the arm and said "You had me worried there flyboy. Why did you do that to me?"
"To make you squirm. You earned it too for dragging me to those horrible ones this morning."
Over the next few hours Loren was nervous. She wanted this house and was worried Harm was being too pushy. Harm was not going to give in on the 30K and to honest what he was offering was fair. The only contingents on the offer was an inspection and financing. After a two hour wait the phone rang and it was their realtor. There offer had been accepted. Loren started bouncing around. She was excited and couldn't contain her happiness.