House Buying // Part 6
Part 6: Offer Accepted! Lay on the Stress!
In my last update, we were dealing with a denied offer, a day full of disappointing showings, and our begrudging return to the hunt. But people, I am a story-teller and I refuse to disappoint.
So here's what's happened:
- We picked ourselves up from the day of terrible, disappointing showings and kept checking every single listing that popped on the market... within MINUTES of it coming on the market. I mean it when I say this is a part-time job. It has been detrimental to be one of the first showings on a good house.
- A house came up on the market on Tuesday afternoon. Tom and I looked it over and got pretty obsessed. In fact the texting convo to the right was our reaction. So I emailed our Realtor twice in 3 minutes and told her we wanted to see it ASAP... and then I also texted her to make sure she REALLY knew the extent of our craziness.
- She got us a showing the following day (Wednesday) and it was exactly as we'd hoped. Perfection. However, we knew others had SOMEHOW seen it before us. So we put in a really strong offer before the day was out, to which they had 24 hours to accept or deny.
- Thursday, we waited and waited and WAITED. Somewhere after 24 hours had passed, we FINALLY got word that they had received multiple offers and they wanted everyone's highest and best by Friday at 5pm. We decided our first offer was truly the strongest we could do, so we left it the same, not knowing how many others we were against. People, we offered their list price, and we assumed others went over. This is actually really common in the market here and in other cities.
- Thinking they would get the offers and choose the highest one, we expected to hear something before the end of the day or in the morning on Saturday. Nada. Fearing we would lose this beautiful house, I wrote the owners a heartfelt letter praising them for taking such immaculate care of their home and property. I complimented them and then explained that we were looking for our first home and yada yada yada. Guys, I went ULTRA cheesy and talked about our future children and how I really want to raise them in this home. I put my heart on my sleeve, but admitted that I understood it has to come down to their best financial choice. I had my Realtor pass on the letter and let it be.
Late that night, our Realtor called and asked if I was with Tom. She told me to put her on speakerphone because OUR OFFER WAS ACCEPTED! Another offer would have netted them more money, but we have a flexible closing date (and I wrote the world's sweetest letter), so we won! We are over the moon excited and grateful!!!
So now the clock starts ticking. Our due diligence starts tomorrow. This means we have to officially put down our earnest money, meet with our loan officer and see what they can officially work out for a loan, and get an appraisal and home inspection done (which, for the sake of transparency adds up to 1K or more that the buyer pays out of pocket... and if you end up deciding the property needs too much work, won't appraise near enough to your offer and the sellers won't negotiate down, you just lose that money and never see it again... just FYI). Once you find out its actual worth or any issues it has, you negotiate that the seller needs to fix this or that, or they need to bring down the price to come closer to appraisal. All this happens in only TWO weeks or less.
This is all very exciting and we definitely spent Saturday night talking about how we'd decorate it and where we can put our furniture... but anything could happen and we or they could choose to back out. If we end up needing to renegotiate and one side or another doesn't budge, that could cause this train to leave the station. Hopefully that doesn't happen, but we need to keep it in mind. The house isn't ours until the keys are in hand!
Thanks so much for reading along (this was super wordy, sorry) and please send us your prayers that all goes smooth and without a hitch!
Any advice for this point? Something we should remember to look for while walking through with an inspector? Something we shouldn't forget to do? Breathe perhaps??
