"Luck" by Mark Twain (p. 213)

My husband and I have been searching for a house to buy. We don't make a lot of money so our range is a lot smaller than most people would try to buy. We started combing through the housing market back in October of 2010, searching for a larger house to accommodate our family of five. We looked and looked. We must have seen at least 4 dozen houses before finding one that we really loved. I was apprehensive to even look at this particular house since I believed it to be out of our price range, but it was so spectacular that I couldn't resist. It was a very large 5 bedroom, 3 bathroom brick split level home with huge white columns on the front porch. To me, it looked like a mini mansion. Our real estate agent convinced us that we had a chance since it was a short sale home, which is that the owners were trying to sell it for less than they owed to the bank. My husband and I decided to take a chance and put an offer in on the house, for as much as we could afford. We didn't think it hurt to try even though we didn't think we had that much of a chance. I mean, this home was gorgeous, valued at almost $200,000! We put our max offer in at $84,000. We sat back and waited and waited and waited. We were really worried when our agent told us there were 3 other offers on this house. And then, we waited even more. A month after we put the offer in, we received a call from our agent telling us they had accepted our offer. You can't imagine how excited we were that they picked our offer! We felt like the luckiest people in the world and started on the inspections for our mortgage. Needless to say, we didn't get our dream house. The house needed a new roof and we couldn't afford to pay for it right then and there. So, the bank would not allow us the mortgage and they gave our dream home to the next highest bidder. They let us know a week before Christmas. It was terrible for all of us. They just closed on that gorgeous house a couple of weeks ago, letting it go for $6000 less than we had offered!