The Story of our House, Part 3
(Previously on The Story of our House, we had arrived at a new, beautiful-looking property while under agreement at Smith St.)
(You can read part one of the story here and part two of the story here.)
I needed to nurse C, so I sat in the car while M and our realtor did a first inspection of the property. C finished up nursing, and I saw M coming out the front door. His eyes were wide and he was smiling. He mouthed, "This is really nice!"
The interior of this property was as beautiful as the exterior (we'll call this one the Jones St property). It was obvious that someone had taken very good care of this house. There was new paint, sparkling hardwood floors, a new furnace and water heater, updated electrical wiring, an immaculate oil tank, a bone-dry basement, good insulation, and a newly carpeted den (playroom?) downstairs. The backyard (and therefore water flow) sloped away from the foundation. And ohhh... the backyard. My favorite part. I couldn't help myself-- I started envisioning a rope swing hanging from the willow tree, a vegetable garden, sledding down the hill with the girls... it seemed too good to be true. All three of us kept looking for "the catch" that might be the reason why this house was priced so low. We didn't find anything-- except that the school district was not as good.
Our realtor looked at us after we had inspected the property and said, "What do you think?"
I immediately said, "This is a no-brainer." C cooed in agreement.
All of the sudden, everything had changed in our heads. We were no longer hoping that the Smith St seller would agree to our requests. In fact, we were sort of hoping for the opposite. We hoped that he would refuse them, so we would be free to get our deposit back and move on to make an offer on this house. If the Smith St seller was completely willing to fix everything we had asked for, and quickly, that was one thing... but we were all pretty sure that was unlikely.
Our realtor said that, although she was leaving for vacation, she would get in touch with the list agent for Smith St the next day (Monday) to hurry things along. In the meantime, she would set us up with one of the other agents in her office so we could prepare an offer for Jones St, and submit it as soon as we heard unfavorable news from Smith St.
We drove home that day, falling more and more in love with this house the more we talked about it. We were sure that we could handle the only minus-- the school district. We could try it out and see how the kids did, we could home-school, we could do school choice. We began discussing all sorts of scenarios.
But we had another two whole days of waiting before we could know anything or do anything for sure. We prayed that no other offers would be made on Jones St in the meantime. We also prayed that the Lord would work to secure the best house for our family-- whatever house that may be.
On Tuesday evening, minutes before his deadline of 6 PM, we finally heard from the Smith St seller. Sure enough, he only agreed to one out of the five repairs we requested (the least expensive one). We were able to withdraw our offer and get our deposit back. We breathed a sigh of relief that the door had closed on the Smith St property.
The very next day, we dropped the girls off at their Auntie Bethie's house and went to view Jones Street one more time. Some wonderful friends of ours (friends who had recently been through the home-buying process) accompanied us to make sure that there wasn't something major that we were overlooking on this property. After we all agreed that this seemed to be a really good house, we made the offer on the spot.
More waiting-- but only 24 hours this time.
Meanwhile, we called home inspectors until we found one that was available to inspect the house within two days. It was already August 1-- we were now down to 30 days before we needed to vacate our current apartment. We needed to move things along as quickly as possible.
Then, around 4 PM on a Thursday, while I was walking around the grocery store with C, my cell phone rang. It was M. "They accepted our offer, with a counter-offer. They want $2000 more."
"Yes. Absolutely. Awesome," I said immediately. "I love this house too much to lose it over $2000."
And so we agreed! We were purchasing a much better home for about $15,000 less than the Smith St house. Hooray!
Two days later, we had the home inspection done, and found pretty much nothing that we needed to ask the seller to repair. The following week brought the drawing up of the purchase and sale agreement, and signing by both buyer and seller. It was around the time of signing the P&S that we began packing up our things. We still didn't really know whether the mortgage would close by the time our lease ended here at the apartment (September 1). Most mortgages take 30-40 days to close. With only 30 days to close, we had (as our mortgage broker put it) "no margin of error."
To be continued...
Read Part 4 here.
(You can read part one of the story here and part two of the story here.)
I needed to nurse C, so I sat in the car while M and our realtor did a first inspection of the property. C finished up nursing, and I saw M coming out the front door. His eyes were wide and he was smiling. He mouthed, "This is really nice!"
The interior of this property was as beautiful as the exterior (we'll call this one the Jones St property). It was obvious that someone had taken very good care of this house. There was new paint, sparkling hardwood floors, a new furnace and water heater, updated electrical wiring, an immaculate oil tank, a bone-dry basement, good insulation, and a newly carpeted den (playroom?) downstairs. The backyard (and therefore water flow) sloped away from the foundation. And ohhh... the backyard. My favorite part. I couldn't help myself-- I started envisioning a rope swing hanging from the willow tree, a vegetable garden, sledding down the hill with the girls... it seemed too good to be true. All three of us kept looking for "the catch" that might be the reason why this house was priced so low. We didn't find anything-- except that the school district was not as good.
Our realtor looked at us after we had inspected the property and said, "What do you think?"
I immediately said, "This is a no-brainer." C cooed in agreement.
All of the sudden, everything had changed in our heads. We were no longer hoping that the Smith St seller would agree to our requests. In fact, we were sort of hoping for the opposite. We hoped that he would refuse them, so we would be free to get our deposit back and move on to make an offer on this house. If the Smith St seller was completely willing to fix everything we had asked for, and quickly, that was one thing... but we were all pretty sure that was unlikely.
Our realtor said that, although she was leaving for vacation, she would get in touch with the list agent for Smith St the next day (Monday) to hurry things along. In the meantime, she would set us up with one of the other agents in her office so we could prepare an offer for Jones St, and submit it as soon as we heard unfavorable news from Smith St.
We drove home that day, falling more and more in love with this house the more we talked about it. We were sure that we could handle the only minus-- the school district. We could try it out and see how the kids did, we could home-school, we could do school choice. We began discussing all sorts of scenarios.
But we had another two whole days of waiting before we could know anything or do anything for sure. We prayed that no other offers would be made on Jones St in the meantime. We also prayed that the Lord would work to secure the best house for our family-- whatever house that may be.
On Tuesday evening, minutes before his deadline of 6 PM, we finally heard from the Smith St seller. Sure enough, he only agreed to one out of the five repairs we requested (the least expensive one). We were able to withdraw our offer and get our deposit back. We breathed a sigh of relief that the door had closed on the Smith St property.
The very next day, we dropped the girls off at their Auntie Bethie's house and went to view Jones Street one more time. Some wonderful friends of ours (friends who had recently been through the home-buying process) accompanied us to make sure that there wasn't something major that we were overlooking on this property. After we all agreed that this seemed to be a really good house, we made the offer on the spot.
More waiting-- but only 24 hours this time.
Meanwhile, we called home inspectors until we found one that was available to inspect the house within two days. It was already August 1-- we were now down to 30 days before we needed to vacate our current apartment. We needed to move things along as quickly as possible.
Then, around 4 PM on a Thursday, while I was walking around the grocery store with C, my cell phone rang. It was M. "They accepted our offer, with a counter-offer. They want $2000 more."
"Yes. Absolutely. Awesome," I said immediately. "I love this house too much to lose it over $2000."
And so we agreed! We were purchasing a much better home for about $15,000 less than the Smith St house. Hooray!
Two days later, we had the home inspection done, and found pretty much nothing that we needed to ask the seller to repair. The following week brought the drawing up of the purchase and sale agreement, and signing by both buyer and seller. It was around the time of signing the P&S that we began packing up our things. We still didn't really know whether the mortgage would close by the time our lease ended here at the apartment (September 1). Most mortgages take 30-40 days to close. With only 30 days to close, we had (as our mortgage broker put it) "no margin of error."
To be continued...
Read Part 4 here.
I'm loving this series! Can't wait to find out what happens next. Vicarious thrill, as we aren't yet in a spot to buy our own house.
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