Updated below- post #19.
We are relocating to the Twin Cities. The housing market there is insane. We have 2 elementary school kids, one boy, one girl, one has autism. The move is going to be hard enough as it is. I am going to be back to work FT for the first time since my first kid was born (yet another transition). I am supposed to start in 3 weeks.
We just got back from our house hunting trip. We found one house we put an offer in on, and long story short, the sellers are being completely inflexible to the point that our realtor says they are unreasonable even considering the hot market. He is worried that even if we agree to their price, they will refuse to budge on inspection and appraisal issues if there are any.
We looked over the house carefully and are pretty sure it needs 2 new chimney caps (I assume this is fairly cheap) and possibly has water damage in the chimney due to the missing caps (I assume this could be more expensive). The other mystery is some possible water damage on the wall behind the bathroom. It is the original bathroom and preserving the vintage tile is important to us, so it could be a pricey fix, or it could be nothing. It is the only shower in the house, so we can't just not use it indefinitely.
We are talking about paying 20-30K (my guess- 10-20K of overpaying plus 10K in repairs) over market on a 340K house if we really want it.
The 4 alternatives are:
1. H and I go and stay in a residence Inn or something and keep looking while the kids stay with my parents for the summer and my cousin is their nanny (risks: kids flip out due to lack of consistency, still don't find something and then we can't even get an apartment by school start, as apartments are already booked out to Aug 1 or Sept 1.) Cost of residence Inn or Airbnb room = ????
2. Rent older 2 bedroom apartment sight unseen, 12 month lease. I think this provides some stability for the kids, and is cheap (1000 a month) but I think both the adults and children will lose their everloving minds in a tiny apartment in a MN winter. Our kids also do not do well sharing a bedroom, which we all kids *can* share, and that it is character building, etc etc, but fuck me if I want to go through a year of that.
3. 3 month lease on a "luxury" building at 2100 a month rent, month to month after that at even higher rent, and a ton of red flags that management is shitty in terms of property upkeep, and will swindle us any chance they can get.
4. We did find one house for rent, 2000 a month, crappy rental house, and the landlord was pretty clear that she wants longer term tenants and won't let us out of the lease early. On paper I feel like this makes the most sense, but for some reason H and I are both really resistant. I don't know why. She also might not even rent it to us since we were very frank with her that we were trying to buy a house and asked her questions about if we could have a shorter lease or get out of the lease.
Financially, we have the full 20% DP saved, but it will take most of our brokerage account and we'll need to resave an emergency fund. My salary will be 90K and H makes 125K.