Contracts Come and Go

I must correct something that I said in the last post. When I said that it had been exactly 4 months since we put the house on the market I had forgotten that I had started that post in May. As of July 6th the house has been on the market 4 months.

So as of today we have had 3 offers on the house. Our first offer came about a month or so into the process. I got really excited. We had taken a break from looking for a new house for us for about 3 weeks. We had just decided to start looking again. I called our buyer realtor and requested to look at some homes but he told me that he was going out of the state for two weeks. At the time I wasn't too worried because we didn't have an offer. Little did I know that there was a message on the machine at home telling us that there had been an offer. We we out to dinner and when we returned home and got the message waiting for us we were excited. It was a decent offer so we took it. Of course this put us in a big hurry to find us a place to move to. But I had just spoken with our buyer realtor and he was going to be out of town. We called the agency and another buyer agent was able to show us some homes. I was really excited and didn't want to wait. I wanted to find our new home. For the first time it felt real that we would actually sell it.

Let me take you on a side note here...I am in the position of selling my first home before I have bought my first home. Since M. already owned the house when we got married I kind of inherited being a home owner. For me that is a really weird place to be since I have not been through this process before and I don't know what to expect.

Anyway, the weekend came and went and we looked at some houses. And then Monday came! And the buyer on our house backed out. No reason given. My little dream came crashing down. I was so disappointed. I thought for sure we would be able to move before the end of the year and all our plans would fall into place. I was mistaken.

About a month later we got another offer and I was a lot more cautious this time. I didn't want to get excited until I was sure that this was for real but the buyer had cash and wanted to move quickly so we had to find something quickly. Also we were now approaching the end of the school year and for teachers that is a very busy time. Since both M. and I are teachers our lives were in something of an uproar. We were also preparing to leave the country for vacation. The buyer this time had an inspection done. That was one step further than we got the last time. Unfortunately the inspection was over the top and of course a 1980 house doesn't meet 2003 code!!!!

At the same time we found a house that we really liked and we made an offer of it. While we were waiting to hear if the seller would accept our offer we got word that there was another offer for the house that we wanted. We had to make what is called a best and final. Not half and hour after we made our best and final we found out that our buyer decided to back out. They didn't even try to approach us about repairs. We had to pull our offer on the new house since we cannot afford two morgages.

Not soon after we left on vacation and while in another country we got another offer. It was not a good offer and after much agony we decided to take it just so that we can be rid of the house. They new buyer was having to finance at 100% and asked us to cover a huge chunk of her closing costs. She did the inspection and approached us for some repairs. We agreed to do a few but not all. She continued to come back and ask us for more and more things...even altering the original agreed upon offer. We finally had to call it quits and say final is final. She promptly backed out. Luckily, we had decided to wait until the option period was over to start looking for something for us. On that note we were spared the disappointment of losing another house that we wanted.

So we are back to square one. I have to say I don't like this emotional roller coster one bit!!!!