Extremely stubborn seller

EDIT: Come to find out - I’m the asshole in this situation. But I’ll leave it up for anyone who wants to read it. The frustrations of wanting a home in these price+rate environments came out of me. Enjoy the read.

My wife and I are looking to buy our first home in HCOL area. We currently rent month to month which allows us some flexibility.

We offered on a 4bd/1.5bth colonial back in October that had been on the market since May with 2 realtor changes and about 6 prices changes - starting at 699k and dropped all the way to 639k.

We found out someone offered 615k when it was listed at 650k and the seller didn’t even negotiate. So we offered 625k with the fact that all the Zillow and Realtor estimates are in the 630k range, the house has been sitting, and houses in our market are almost all going for under asking price now. We thought it was a very fair offer with where the market was at and were even willing to negotiate, but just didn’t want to start higher. They countered with an offer 5k lower in price, but reduced our realtors fee by 6k, essentially netting them $1000 more than what the 650k list price was - so we stood firm at our offer and were not going to move if they didn’t want to move in our direction. They turned it down and the house sat.

Then we offered again the week of Thanksgiving, about a few weeks later after he had dropped it down to 639k in hopes that we could have a house for Christmas. They hadn’t received any other offers in that time. We offered 630k. (Yeah, maybe we should’ve just gone with the 640k, but can’t play Monday morning quarterback now). They said no, threw a temper tantrum and took it off the market completely without even negotiating.

The seller bought the house within the last few years and did an absolute horrible job “renovating” it and has this ludicrous idea that it’s worth 675-700k. They live in another house in the same town and doesn’t seem to be actually willing to sell unless they can get an absurd profit for it. The only problem is we haven’t been able to find a colonial to for sale in our price range. There was a 3bd/2.5bth colonial a few streets over that sold for 650k with more square footage and about the same amount of work needed. It’s the closest comp to this house and the seller thinks they should get 675k with only 1.5bth in the entire house.

We found out they’re putting it back on the market for 675k and think that the new spring market will provoke a bidding war. Our absolute top of budget of what we can afford is 650k. Why does the one house we like have to have such a hardhead seller?

What would you do?