New House!

When we found out we were having twins, Boris and I went through various stages of "holy shit this is a big deal."  We were SO prepared for one child. We owned our home, had two safe cars, had good jobs, plenty of savings, and generally had a plan of how to raise the kid.  We even had a 5 year plan -- we said that when we had kid number two (hopefully within 5 years of the first), we'd move to the East Bay to be closer to our families.

Our first "holy shit" thought was, "we'll have to buy two of everything!" Then we thought, "do we need to buy a bigger car?" Eventually we came to the inevitable... "do we need to move?" We thought it over and eventually (reluctantly) answered yes.  Not only is our 2.5 bedroom condo not ideal for two kids (plenty of room for us and the kids, but not much room for visitors and helpers), but we are a full hour away from our families. The more we learned about raising twins, the more we realized we are going to need all the help we can get. That meant moving to the East Bay and commuting to Palo Alto and Mountain View (45 minutes for Boris, about an hour for me with no traffic).

Deciding to move was hard, especially since we just bought our current home LESS THAN A YEAR AGO.  Luckily it has already appreciated in value, so at least we wouldn't lose money.  Plus, Boris found an IRS exemption for the standard rule that you have to pay taxes on the full gain if you live there for less than 2 years. Apparently there is an exception for "multiple births from the same pregnancy."  Hurray!

We started looking around online for homes in the Pleasanton/Dublin/Danville area, and pretty quickly decided to focus on Pleasanton -- it has a slightly better commute, has great schools, and isn't too far from our parents (in Danville and Walnut Creek).  We thought about buying a cheap little condo to live in for a few years until we were ready to move to Danville, but I just couldn't picture raising my kids there, even for a few years.  So we looked at real houses and quickly found one online that we liked.  Boris emailed to get more info, and pretty soon we were viewing the property.  We loved it, but it was the first house we looked at, so we weren't too attached.  The agent that showed us the place called us the next day and told us that the seller had received two offers for well above asking price.  We decided we weren't ready to get in a bidding war, so we let it go.  Over the next week I started feeling pretty sad about that, because it really was the best place around, and I didn't like anything else on the market.

A week later, the agent called us and told us that BOTH offers had fallen through.  So we called our parents and asked them to go look at it. They did, and they both liked it, so we put in an offer for below asking price.  24 hours later, we were pre-approved for a mortgage and the seller had accepted our offer.  It happened much faster than we had anticipated and we don't plan to move quite yet, but we love the house so I think it was worth it!

Here are some photos of the new place (5 bedrooms, 3.5 baths, 2,900 square feet):