Another House bites it

We went to see our second house today. We really liked it and did the usual thing and bid 5K below the asking price. We knew there would be a negotiation back and forth. But the seller went way over what we had bid, 15 K over. Our agent thought things sounded funny and decided to investigate. We put in another bid at the asking price. We liked it enough so we were okay with that. But our agent got back to us and said the seller refused to go any lower than 7K above the asking price. He said it had something to do with paying off the mortgage and there was supposedly another really interested buyer. I don't know if I believe that.

It was a really nice house but we were a bit angsty. It's probably legal  to list it lower than you intend to sell hoping to bring in more bids that way, but it feels like a bait and switch. It feels like false advertising. Normally if you want to sell around 130K you list at around 135K or 140K knowing buyers are going to underbid and you have high platform to negotiate from. They just did the opposite. Weird.

This house has been on and off the market repeatedly over the last two years. So hubbie and I sat down with the wish list we created a few weeks ago and realized that this house actually was off on everything we had written down. We looked at the floorplan to see how easy it would be to add another bathroom, to bring it up to what we wanted and it just isn't doable. The shine wore off real fast. It was a very pretty house with 2 acres of land that backed right up to a beautiful rocky creek. But it's not good enough and I'm afraid I would grow to resent it. If the floorplan allowed for easy addition and improvement then it would be more attractive.

We kinda fell for it cause it was move in ready and had really attractive cottage features and a garden already in place. But I can't reconcile the wish list with the angst from negotiation. Plus the owners live down the street about 10 houses and that would be awkward.

We'll keep looking. I'm going to tell our agent to expand our search north to some of the north towns to see if there are any properties in our price range that fit what we are looking for. His primary search is by acreage. That has really helped narrow it down.