After many weeks of looking at houses and falling in "love" with them only to suffer the disappointment of finding out that they already had offers on them by the time we spoke with our agent about them, we finally found one and put an offer in. I guess I should clarify that it's not really a house, it's actually a condo. B and myself have gone back and forth between looking for a houses or a condo, 2 bedrooms or 3 bedrooms, this area or that area and the funny thing about it is that our answer was in front of us the entire time. Ya see, we started seriously thinking of buying a home in early-mid December and we started exploring our options. The problem was that each of us was fairly specific about what we wanted and it wasn't necessarily the same thing. B was looking at 2 bdrm condos, I was looking at 3 bdrm houses. B's logic was that we are looking to buy something now and then sell it when the market turns around and have a bunch of equity and that between now and then we could handle 2 bedrooms even if we did have a second child. My logic was a bit different. Did I think we could handle a 2 bdrm with 2 kids, sure (if I had to). But my concern was the uncertainty of not knowing just when this economy of ours is going to turn around. It could be 1 year, it could be 5 or 10 but I wanted to be prepared just in case it was later rather than sooner and we ended up with more than 2 children.
Anyways, with that said, HERE is a link to the condo that we put an offer on. The truth is that we saw this condo fairly early on in our search, in fact it may well have been the first one we ever really gave some thought to. We drove by it and decided we didn't like it - it simply wasn't for us. You're probably wondering why we would cross it off the list so quickly. And honestly, now when I look back at it the reason was a stupid one...we didn't think the street was wide enough. Now you're probably wondering if we crossed it off our list how on earth did we get to the point to putting an offer in on it and honestly I'm not 100% sure of that myself. I do know that we looked at several via the internet and saw several that we really would have loved to buy. However, it wasn't meant to be because by the time we would call the agent we would find that it already had an accepted offer or had been the price, though it had started super low, had quickly gone above and beyond what we were willing and able to pay. So about a week, out of the blue, I asked B if the condo had sold and he said no, so I called our agent to set up a viewing.
We set the viewing up for 2 days later (last Friday) and I honestly wasn't expecting too much but upon entering the condo I was really pleasantly surprised - I could see myself living there. He went on to show up 3 more condos which were all bank owned foreclosures. None of them were horrible and they all had at least one thing that I really liked about them but I was sold on the first one. Upon arriving home B and I talked about it and sent an email to the agent with a few more questions. We prayed about it throughout the weekend and we fasted about it on Sunday and after feeling good about it, we made our offer on Monday.
Needless to say we're happy but we're trying not too get too excited about it. Even though the sellers have accepted our offer, since it is a short sale it requires bank approval of the sale amount. Our agent is currently handling 15 short sales, including ours and he has informed us that typically it takes 90 days minimum before the bank will make a decision. He said, "you would think that they would be in a hurry to get rid of these properties, but they're not. They could careless whether they sell or not." The bank will either agree and sell it at our offer price or they will counteroffer. We are willing to go a bit higher if necessary but overall we believe things will work out for the best in the end. So keep your fingers crossed for us and keep us in your prayers. We'll let you know more as we know more but don't expect anything anytime soon.
3 comments:
So excited you found a place you like! I hope everything moves along quickly for you! We signed purchase agreement papers last September and waited until the middle of January before the buyers mortgage finally did an appraisal. Due to complications, we're still in this, and waiting... I hope yours goes faster!!!!!!
Good luck! I hope everything goes well- how exciting:)
Condo looks great! It's a wonderful value for the square footage. I hope everything goes well with the short sale process. Hopefully we'll be visiting Michigan in May or June and we can see your new place!
Post a Comment