We Got It!
We got the house, our glorious house, and here it is:
My lesson in real estate: let’s not do this too often. We got the house, but we had a couple of weeks of craziness to get here.
After a day of seemingly normal, successful back-and-forth with the seller on a Tuesday two weeks ago (we offered; they countered; we countered back), negotiations went haywire, and suddenly no one was responding to our bid; it seemed the sellers were trying to find another buyer and that we would ultimately be forced to make a blind bid. It was all a lot of real-estate jostling, with our broker angrily threatening to withdraw our offer, accusing the seller’s broker of acting deceitfully, and the seller’s broker responding with a lot of explanations and mild panic. All we knew by late the next night was that we likely weren’t going to get the house unless we offered asking price or higher. Which we just couldn’t do. So I spent that night crying on the couch, feeling robbed, because if we’d just accepted their counter offer the house would have been ours.
Anyway. Surprise, surprise, we heard early the next morning that another buyer had made an offer but the seller chose to go with our second offer. We couldn’t believe it. Andrew called while I was at the playground, and I jumped into the air.
We just finished the attorney review period, a tense three days of waiting for the seller to sign the contract amendment, during which time they were free to walk away if they chose to. But today, it was all signed and delivered back to our attorney, and later this afternoon I’m going to write and mail the largest check I’ve ever written, for half the down payment.
It's really ours. Asbestos tiling, no AC, dungeon/bathroom, uninsulated rooms, the whole lot of it. And we couldn’t be more elated. More pictures to come soon.
Andrew Googled the owners and found an obituary for the woman, who died last year (her husband lived in the house until recently, when he moved to a nursing home). They were married sixty years and lived in this house for forty-five of those years. The obit said she died “in the home she cherished.”
It is that—a home to be cherished. This is our soul-mate house. I look constantly at the handout the seller’s broker was handing out at the open house, and I feel like I’m living there already, like it’s already been ours for a very long time. I can’t wait to move in.
My lesson in real estate: let’s not do this too often. We got the house, but we had a couple of weeks of craziness to get here.
After a day of seemingly normal, successful back-and-forth with the seller on a Tuesday two weeks ago (we offered; they countered; we countered back), negotiations went haywire, and suddenly no one was responding to our bid; it seemed the sellers were trying to find another buyer and that we would ultimately be forced to make a blind bid. It was all a lot of real-estate jostling, with our broker angrily threatening to withdraw our offer, accusing the seller’s broker of acting deceitfully, and the seller’s broker responding with a lot of explanations and mild panic. All we knew by late the next night was that we likely weren’t going to get the house unless we offered asking price or higher. Which we just couldn’t do. So I spent that night crying on the couch, feeling robbed, because if we’d just accepted their counter offer the house would have been ours.
Anyway. Surprise, surprise, we heard early the next morning that another buyer had made an offer but the seller chose to go with our second offer. We couldn’t believe it. Andrew called while I was at the playground, and I jumped into the air.
We just finished the attorney review period, a tense three days of waiting for the seller to sign the contract amendment, during which time they were free to walk away if they chose to. But today, it was all signed and delivered back to our attorney, and later this afternoon I’m going to write and mail the largest check I’ve ever written, for half the down payment.
It's really ours. Asbestos tiling, no AC, dungeon/bathroom, uninsulated rooms, the whole lot of it. And we couldn’t be more elated. More pictures to come soon.
Andrew Googled the owners and found an obituary for the woman, who died last year (her husband lived in the house until recently, when he moved to a nursing home). They were married sixty years and lived in this house for forty-five of those years. The obit said she died “in the home she cherished.”
It is that—a home to be cherished. This is our soul-mate house. I look constantly at the handout the seller’s broker was handing out at the open house, and I feel like I’m living there already, like it’s already been ours for a very long time. I can’t wait to move in.
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