House hunting is getting tiring.  We secured pre-approval for a mortgage (after signing about 80 pages of documents) and secured an agent to help us.  We personally viewed 7 properties with our agent and decided to bid on one of them, but we lost to another bidder.  In our price range, we are only able to look at fixers, and although we have additional budget available for the actual fixing, we found it positively alarming as to what people will live in and what banks will try to sell as a mere "fixer".  5 of the 7 "fixers" we saw were properties that I would just as soon take a match to and then rebuild from the ground up.  But then, perhaps the asking price is simply the value of the land the horrible house is sitting on.  I now understand a little more real estate speak, more than I've written of in a previous post.  "Needs some work" at a minimum means "Needs a new roof"...Probably 3 of the 5 horrible houses had leaks, and that does not count the one house where THE ROOF WAS CAVING IN.  As in, from the outside, I could see the roof was caving in, and from the inside, you could see sky.  I do not understand how the bank could legally even allow people to come tour the property.  There were no warning signs "enter at your own risk" or anything like that. 

Some houses, even if we could see fixing them, were located on busy streets, or hills that will eventually have mudslides, so they were ruled out due to location.

The house we bid on needed cosmetic renovation from floor to ceiling in every room, but was clean and structurally sound and was in a great location.  We bid higher than the asking price, which seems utterly absurd in this market, but after viewing the comps we felt that the asking price was low.  We weren't the only ones...someone else bid even higher and offered cash.  Unfortunately the type of loan we are getting requires a 60-90 day escrow period.  So we couldn't really compete with the other bidder's terms.

It seems more likely now that we will continue to rent for at least another year.  For our budget we can rent a new or updated luxury rental in city of Portland, or we can buy a crapshack outside of Portland and start fixing it up.  In our exhaustion, the idea of a luxury rental that belongs to someone else is actually quite appealing at this time.