Escrow. Eeep!
It wasn't supposed to be this quick. I thought, wouldn't it be nice to find the home and close in October? It would give us time to cull thru our belongings, freecycle items, pack in a leisurely pace. That didn't happen. We did a second walk through of our top two contenders on Thursday. The first one was a reluctant "no". The location and amount of serious TLC required were just too much. The second one was number one in our minds, we basically saw other homes and compared them to this one. The location, the price, the features (partially finished basement, hardwood floors, big kitchen, large yard, corner lot, leaded glass windows, etc)were knocking out the other options.
It's a slow market. We thought we had time. Trouble is, our number one was on the market due to relocation. This meant that a relocation co. was handling the details. The company was marketing aggressively, they changed agents frequently and dropped the price every 30 days. When we saw the list of recent showings, we knew we had to act. The home was already listed at around 20-30 thousand less than comparable homes in the area. I think the only reason it didn't sell before the last drop is because of it's one major flaw-only one bathroom.**
Bargaining with a relocation company is also different. They want to sell quickly but, may not get back to you right away. If you make a low offer and in the three or four days it takes to hear back, they receive a better offer, they have no reason to counter. We were lucky to hear back from them so quickly.
I'm excited but, mostly nervous. I'm waiting for something to fall through. I have a hard time working with a time line that I can't control. We need to have a termite inspection and a home inspection before the end of the month. We close on September 24th. Keep your fingers crossed that everything goes smoothly.
If everything goes as planned we'll be in our new home with a rescue dog*** by October. Don't people that rescue dogs deserve to have a smooth home buying experience?
* Do I lose points for using the "we" of U2's cover instead of the "I" from the Beatles original?
** the basement has a rough in (emphasis on rough) for a bathroom, and we plan to renovate upstairs. The master bedroom has what was the walk up to the attic and it shares a wall with the smallest bedroom. The smallest bedroom shares a wall with the bathroom. We plan on re-creating a walk up (and possibly working on the attic), pushing thru the shared bedroom wall to create a master suit with walk in closet and full bath.
*** Petfinder is my new crack. They have videos of some of the dogs and that's just not fair. I want to adopt them all.
