A couple of days before Halloween, our realtor called us and told us that she had some clients that want to put an offer on the house. They had been to our open house a couple weeks before. But, they hadn't seemed to show any interest until all of the sudden they wanted to write an offer! We were SOOOO excited. But, not too excited.
You see, we had been here before. At this point our house had been on the market for about 85 days. We already had two offers a couple weeks before. The first one was almost $20,000 less than our asking price. On a $140,000 house, that's a big difference. We negotiated, which was a stressful and awful process, over the course of a couple days. But, the highest they could afford was $127,000. SERIOUSLY!?!? Why are you looking at a house that is nowhere near your price range?
In the process of all of this, we got another offer. Our realtor called us to tell us there was an offer coming, but didn't know how much. Again, we were sooo excited! We were planning on counteroffering the crappy offer that night. We were hoping this was our saving grace. The offer was $139,000. Hooray, right? Nope. They wanted to lease-to-own. Seriously?? Argh. And the best part? The lady went bankrupt a year ago. Yeah, like she'd be able to get a loan to buy this house in 15 months. ARGH!
This was all in mid october. We had already been so close several other times. In september, one couple came through twice and said they were going to write an offer. So, we waited all weekend for the phone to ring. No offer. Then they decided they wanted to come through again on Monday. GREAT! We thought, this was it! So, we waited for the phone to ring again. And we waited some more. Surely if they come through three times, they're going to write an offer, right? Well, their realtor didn't call ours back for two weeks. Apparently they picked a different house.
There was another lady in early September who came through on a friday. She told our realtor that she wanted to bring her parents through. Surely a good sign, right? Well, she decided she wanted to come through ours and a couple other houses on labor day. She apparently called our realtor to get the showing set up. But our realtor didn't get the message until that night. By that point it was too late, they just bypassed our house. ARGH!
So, we just waited. We started talking about when we were going to take the house off the market. If you take it off the market for 60 days, then your "days on market" number resets. So, we were planning on taking it off the market in late november and go back on in early February. Yes, right before the baby is due to arrive. Certainly not ideal. Knowing the crazyness that the last month has been since we went under contract, words cannot describe how happy we are that we're doing this now, and not with a new baby. We can't even imagine having to show the house with a new baby.
The offer on Halloween came at just the right time. Sometimes it's funny the way things work out. Let me explain.
We looked at new houses a lot in august. But as soon as we realized that we weren't going to sell as quickly as we thought we would, we stopped looking. We didn't want to fall in love with a house and not be able to buy. But, we kept looking at houses online the entire time we were on the market. So, when we went under contract, we started looking right away. We were worried, because our buyers wanted to close on November 30th (less than a month away)!
By this point, we had narrowed down our house search to just a few. We had already decided we wanted to be in the fenton area. The biggest problem we were running in to is that we wanted a newer house with a large backyard. There were very few newer houses that had a big backyard. Most of them just had a deck or small patio, and that was about it. That just wasn't acceptable for us. Our requirement was a backyard as big or bigger than our current one. I can't tell you how many houses we walked through or looked at pictures of that were immediately disqualified due to the backyard. It was quite frustrating!
On our first day out looking with our realtor since selling the house, we looked at three houses. The third one was just PERFECT! 14 Misty Lou. We love everything about it. It sits on an acre. Four bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms. 2200 square feet. The house is 26 years old. It's in a great school district, Rockwood, and is less than half a mile from the elementary school. Two car garage. Two wood burning fireplaces. Granite in the kitchen. Finished basement with a fifth bedroom. When you throw in the HUGE yard, it's just plain perfect. Everything we wanted. We even wrote the riding lawnmower they had in the shed in to the contract! So, I'm going from a push (reel) mower to a riding lawnmower. Quite an adjustment. But, one I'm ok with making!
Before our second walkthrough, I talked to some of the neighbors up the street. One was bringing baked goods to the other. They seemed to nice! They really wanted us to buy because they were hoping for more little kids in the neighborhood (the lady had a three year old and a baby). She even told me that she'd bake for us if we bought! Hah, seem like nice neighbors.
So back to "the way things work out." This house had been on the market since June. But, they were way overpriced then. They cut the price four different times, between $10,000 and $15,000 each time. So, if we had sold our house right away in august or september, this house wouldn't have even been in our portfolio to look at because it was out of our price range.
You may be thinking "well, there's plenty of other houses out there." The problem is that in our online portfolio (setup by the realtor, shows all houses that meet your criteria), we were down to just one house.....this one. So, if we didn't buy this one, we probably would've had to wait until the spring to buy. We were so specific in what we wanted, that this was all that was left. Luckily for us, it's everything we ever wanted and then some.
We put in an offer just two days after we got the contract on our house. After some negotiation, we finally reached an agreement. That set off a whirlwind of events. We had so much to do in so little time. There were three inspections to get done on this house, two on the new house. I had to finish up a bunch of small projects to get our house to pass inspections. I had to get all of our loan stuff setup. It was CRAZY. On top of all of that, I was still teaching. Oh, and then there's STUCO. We had a really big event (a quarter auction) that I was in charge of during all of the crazyness.
To reward you for reading all of that, here's a couple of pictures. I'm sure there will be more soon.
So, to sum up the house selling experience: FRUSTRATING! We just felt like we never had any luck....until Halloween that is. But, then we realized just how lucky we were. Our dream house was cheap enough because we waited so long.The one good thing about all of the showings we had?....I learned how to clean a house very quickly and efficiently!
We're closing in just over a week. It's coming so fast! Posting may be light until we can get in and settled to the new house.
1 comment:
Congratulations on the new house!
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