Author: Guy LeCharles Gonzalez

"Pop quiz, hotshot. How much do you want this house?" Highest and Best. That's the rules of the game for our bid on the house we want. All offers will go through the listing agent for presentation tomorrow afternoon and the seller will pick the "highest and best" of them, with no counter-offers being made. "Highest" is self-explanatory; "best" represents the variables like mortgage status, closing date, etc., potential tie-breakers in case of equal "highest" offers. We're good on that side of the equation, now we have to figure out the other side without getting ripped off. Fucking seller's market!…

What a crazy week. We flip-flopped so much on our housing situation, I felt like John Kerry by Sunday night!Faced with the likelihood of stretching ourselves unacceptably thin to afford a decent house in Bloomfield, we started working on Plan B, an apartment in a Manhattan neighborhood with a good elementary school. Our logic was that the rent would still be cheaper than the mortgage and would include such things as heat and hot water, and was partially driven by issues connected to India's speech-delay and the difference in available services between NY and NJ. She's been progressing noticeably over…