So, as I mentioned at the end of the last post, S and I had been searching MLS, attending a few open houses, and then cruising some neighborhoods. I have to admit, I was a bit down after seeing those awful basements and also realizing that buying a house in Dundas or Westdale just wasn't going to happen on this go-round (simply due to price). Anyway, Aeromove put us in touch with a realtor from Burlington, and she gave us a call, got all the details: price range, features we wanted (two bath, like I said), a non-scary basement. She knew we weren't terribly fond of the mountain, and that I didn't want to be really far away from work.
The realtor setup our search for us, and we got the regular updates. Alas, most of the houses that came up were on the mountain! Undeterred, we selected the interesting non-mountain houses, and waited for the earliest opportunity to physically walk in some of these houses. We noticed that the houses that we were being sent didn't include any houses east of downtown, but we were seeing these in our own MLS searches. So, S asked our realtor if we could see some houses in the St. Clair area.
We ended up doing a 5-house tour in this area in one afternoon. All of the houses were old, but in various states of (dis)repair. The first house we saw was by far the best of the lot: in good condition, spacious, nice floors, etc. After those initial tours we liked that one house, but wanted to see some other houses in different areas.
But then! Something happened that changed all of that. We found out that on the next Friday, other buyers would be making an offer on that first house. We were torn: we really liked it, but we hadn't had time to look at much else. What to do? We made a quick decision to have a go at making a counter offer to try and get it. If we lost, we'd have more opportunity to look around. If we won, we'd get a nice house. After a strange, low-stakes bidding war, we ended up getting the house for the asking price.
If there was one downside to the whole affair it was that we found out during the home inspection that there was some old wiring in the home, the kind that insurers don't like. We ended up signing off on the house instead of trying to cut a deal with the owners to take some money off the deal, because we didn't know better. It wasn't a deal-breaker, just kind of a bummer.
For those wondering, Aeromove worked pretty good. Never having done this before, I don't know how using an Aeromove realtor affects how they interact with the buyer; if they want to do less for you because they have to pay for some Aeroplan miles. It certainly will limit your choice in realtors, but that wasn't a problem for us. We got the points after we told Aeromove that the deal had closed successfully and we now owned the house.
