Crushed IKEA Dreams

It was quite a crazy week... On a whim, my husband and I went to see a one bedroom condo- 1/2 block from our house (across the street with one house between). Three years ago we seriously looked into buying another one of the four units in this historic 1889 Victorian building, but it was weeks after my son was born and it seemed like too much to take on at the time.

On Tuesday we went to see the newly listed unit and immediately fell in love... http://www.rmls.com/ ML# 7072629. We scrambled to research, dream, call our loan officer, accountant and realtor.

We both have families that live out of state, we thought this unit would make an ideal guest house. We planned to furnish it and decorate it (a reason to shop at IKEA). Our plan was to rent it as a short-term vacation rental (by the night - $135; by the week $750; or by the month $2200). We would need to rent it about 50% of the time to break even. We made an offer on Thursday night. We were so excited and nervous. I would finally have the perfect "hobby" business and beautiful place for our families to stay.

Turns out some other people had the same idea... On Friday, the owners received two offers for MORE than the asking price - we only offered $185,000 (of $189,000).

I guess it is not meant to be. It was fun to dream about my shopping trip to IKEA ;-) Maybe I just miss shopping!