shortly after the post about us putting down an offer on a place on the 1800 block of Monroe NW, we got word from our real estate agent that a grand total of two people saw our place over the weekend.

the market has judged our sale price, and found it wanting.

they love our particular unit, they just hate our building. and the high condo fees. and the dated common areas. but mostly the high condo fees. which, of course, are the two things we technically can’t control.

fortunately, i’m on the board of our association and there have been a LOT of conversations about dropping our fees this year. and the dingy common areas are up for renovation this year, too. so, hopefully i just have to nudge those conversations along a bit.

it turns out that we are actually an old school condo board in that we have pretty consistently high monthly fees, but not a single special assessment in memory (because we always have money in the bank). unfortunately, every other association on the planet has swapped to a different model, dropping their fees dramatically and just expecting that big expenses will mean big(ish) special assessments.

i know which one i’d prefer — but i guess that’s why i’m trying to move into a house.

it also turns out that our building isn’t pre-approved for FHA loans, which means that people can’t buy into the building with federally backed loans that require as little as 3.5% down payment. instead, our buyers right now need to get traditional bank loans, which require 10 to 20% down.

so it looks like i’ve got a couple “special” projects on my hands for the next month.

regardless, we backed out of making an offer on the Monroe place — and plan on doing what we can with the condo fees, common areas and the fha pre-approval process in (hopefully) the next month. that’d mean we (again) can go gangbusters with the selling and the buying in the first week of April.

for those of us playing along at home, we’ve now looked at a more than dozen properties, and have “tried” putting an offer down on a five of them:

• 3330 17th Street NW
• 3215 Walbridge Place NW
• 1822 Monroe Street NW
• 420 6th Street NE
• 1873 Monroe Street NW

… but haven’t actually bit the bullet on any.

i guess the good news is that places keep coming on the market. now, if we can get that one extra-special one off the market, we’ll be all set.