5/27/2013: Upon meeting our realtor at the house to do a second walk through with Ryan's dad, we found out the house in a short sale. At first, this turned my stomach. I didn't really know what this meant and from anything I had heard previously, it was going to be a bad deal. Thankfully with the help of our realtor (who is experienced in short sales), we were able to come to terms with this and move forward. The definition of a "short sale" is a property whose debts outweigh it's worth. Basically, our seller bought the house in 2006 for $237,000 and it's now worth a lot less and the seller cannot afford to repay the loan he has on the house. The bank has accepted the house back at $135,000 from the seller, and thus, we get the asking price of $139,900.
5/30/2013: After a few days of talking, Ryan and I decided we were ready to put in an offer. To limit the amount of money we would pay out of pocket, we decided to offer full price for the house with the bank paying closing costs (about $6500). Ryan and I both agreed that we didn't want to go into homeownership penny less, so the least we could pay up front, the better. It was a lonnnnnnng few days before we heard anything.
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| My view from signing day. |
6/2/2013: Ryan and I were feeling good about our offer. To be honest, we kind of thought we would at least hear back from the seller by Friday, but there was no word. I'm not sure how most short sales work, but with ours, the seller and the bank had to approve our offer before we could move forward. We went into the weekend anxiously awaiting word, only to hear nothing until Sunday evening. We ran into our realtor at a going away party for a friend and she told us there might be another offer on the house- GASP!!! At this point in my head, I basically said "screw it" because there is no way Ryan and I could get into a bidding war for this house. The panic set in and we were both kind of a mess. We started assessing other options, I was hounding Craigslist for new apartments like it was my job, and we were both pretty unhappy at this point.
6/3/2013: We found out the offer we had been so worried about was a low ball offer, one that was almost laughable and that our offer was being sent to the bank for approval. At this point, the seller still hasn't approved our offer, I'll be interested to hear what his hold up is. We did put a clause in our offer that said he needed to get the HUGE old, rotting hot tube off the deck before we would move in, I'm curious to know if that's deterring him.
6/5/2013: The bank countered our offer, giving us 48 hours to respond. This is where Ryan gets really annoyed and resentful towards the offer/house. What the bank countered with is that they would "pay closing costs" with the sale price of the house being $6500 more than we offered. Now, I get kind of confused, maybe I'll have Ryan come do an update to try to explain what happened. So basically, they raised the price of the asking price so that our closing costs were wrapped up into our loan. So now instead of paying $139,900 and $1,000 out of pocket, we're going to pay $143,000 with $3,000 out of pocket. This set us back a little. We had to really think on this. I'm a penny pincher by nature and being like $2,000 from me+Ryan and the street scares the shit out of me. About $2,000 is what we would be left with in savings after doing this transaction. This is where again I started looking at Craigslist and inquiring about different places. The apartment that we've been wanting for the last couple of years now came back online and we had thrown around the idea of moving in there to save money and lower costs. At one point, both Ryan and I had agreed we weren't going to do the house deal because a) we were scared, b) we were pissed at the bank and c) we couldn't afford it.
But then something happened. We both went to bed Thursday night, 24 hours left to decide to counter, walk away or accept, and our whole outlook changed. When I came out of the shower yesterday morning, I was convinced getting the house was in our best interest, knowing that we could make it work, then I saw this quote:
"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage" -Anais Nin
That solidified it for me. I told Ryan how I was feeling and he said he felt the same!! So last night, as of 5:00 PM, we have a verbal mutual acceptance of the counter!
What This Means Now:
Come Monday when we actually sign the acceptance papers, we have 10 business days to do an inspection on the house. We have been given a few names in the area and we are going to have a contractor friend come down to do the walk through with us as well. We want to know what we are looking at. After the inspection, we've reached the point of no return I think. Our realtor says we're at least 30-45 days from closing, so we'll be giving notice to our landlord that next month will be our last living in our little bungalow, and then we will be homeowners.... SCARY!!! I often ponder aloud, when the hell did I become an adult?? It's scary shit.
Ryan and I have been cooking up many plans in our heads as far as changes we're going to make, updates to be done and so many other things. In another post I want to break down the financial piece of the house, detailing how we can afford a house this large, what our monthly costs are going to look like and how I'm working to save us so money at the same time. This is an exciting time and I hope to share all of our experiences along the way, so stay tuned!!!
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