We headed back out and started looking at houses. We even found one that we loved - it was an amazing house, gorgeous woodwork, huge, lovely, priced too good to be true...and it was. The listing agent listed it well below asking price to generate multiple bids, which it did. In one day it had six bids on it, and ours just couldn't compete. So we kept looking.
What we eventually decided to do was sit down with our laptops and look at every listing that was in our price range, was reasonably big enough to house us and our stuff, and was in a location that we were comfortable with. Then we looked up the Truth in Sale of Housing reports for each of those houses (thanks, Minneapolis!) and if there were any signs of major repair work to be done we crossed them off the list. We were running out of time to do a rehab loan, and I was okay with that, to be frank.
We ended up with a list of 20 to 30 some houses, which was a bit overwhelming, especially since we had already seen so many. What we decided to do was have Justin go out with our Realtor and look at all the houses without me, and then have all three of us go out and look at the houses that had real potential to fit our needs. This ended up working out really well, and after they had seen about 10 or 15, we made plans for me to see the top 3 of that batch. It all gets rather complicated around this time, since I was in rehearsals for my Fringe show, and Justin was in performances with Shakespeare and Company, and was also busy getting Lyme Disease (he caught it super early, has been taking antibiotics and seems to be on the road to a full recovery). But we found the time to go and look at the top picks and it just so happens that one of them turned out to be perfect.
It's a two story house, just down the street from the Victorian, so it was a location that we were okay with. It has three bedrooms, high ceilings, a formal dining room, a sun room, a beautiful backyard and a clean TISH report. Nice hardwood floors, Central a/c, a screened in front porch and enough room for us to live there comfortably for many years to come. The one hitch? It's a short sale.
For those of you unfamiliar with what a short sale is (as were we) a brief description. When a homeowner is having trouble making mortgage payments, and thinks that they are headed towards foreclosure, but will be unable to sell the house for the amount that they still owe on it, they can go to their lender and propose a short sale. The lender has to agree to it, since they'll be losing money, but in general can be in the lenders best interest, because if they have to foreclose on the house, that means a lot of problems for them.
Ultimately what it comes down to is that at this point, the person selling the house doesn't really decide if they want to sell it to someone, their lender does. So we wrote up our purchase agreement and sent our offer in. And were then told that the seller's bank would take a minimum of 30 days to respond to our offer. Which...still floors me. That's 30 days to just say if they will agree to our purchase price or not, we still then have to go through the process of securing our loan which usually takes another 30 days. We think we'll be able to close our loan in less than 30 days, but the real problem at this point is the wait to hear back on our purchase agreement. Banks are such weird entities to deal with in this regard, and while our offer is strong (and the only one they have) we're still nervous that they might not accept it. Which puts us in a bad spot, if only because we'll be out of time to find a new house to purchase. But we remain hopeful. Struggling to be patient, but hopeful.
It's so hard mainly because I want this house so much. It really is a wonderful house and while I have had some uncertainty about whether homeownership was for me in the past few years, now that I'm so close to it I *really* want it. To be able to paint the walls whatever color I (and I suppose Justin) want, to fix things and change things as I see fit, to not have to deal with a landlord. To have the space for storing power tools and a garage to keep my moped in. To settle someplace and not have to worry about moving for a very long time.
Hopefully August 25th will roll around we'll we hear back from the bank that it's a go and we'll get everything else started. Otherwise...part 4, I guess.
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