Under Contract

If you remember a few months back in our house hunting,  we had found the one, but the sellers weren’t interested in selling it, so we were not able to get it under contract.

Since then, we have looked, looked, and looked some more at houses in the town we are currently living in, and also in nearby surrounding towns. We were coming up empty.  Either the houses were too small, needed major remodeling, or we just couldn’t find what we were looking for. 

I had an idea that house shopping would be like wedding dress shopping- you just know the minute you spot that perfect wedding dress.  I would see pictures of houses for sale on the Internet, and from the pictures they looked promising.  I knew the minute we drove up to a house, it would be the one. 

Uh, not really.  After two months, we were not finding what we wanted: a house that had- at least three bedrooms, a back yard on the bigger side, and room in the house to grow: translation- a basement, oh yeah, in our price range, in a neighborhood that we liked.

Evidently this is harder than I thought.  We found a house in August, that was almost the one.  It was in a nearby smaller town.  It was a few years old, but had only been lived in for a year.  It looked almost brand new.  We were really close to making an offer on it, but we hesitated.  It would have been fine for us now, but as the boys grew, it really didn’t have any more room to grow.  We both felt like we would outgrow it in five years, and it felt like we were settling for something we knew wasn’t right, but hoping it was.  

So we passed on it.  The evening we decided to pass on the house, I was checking the listings again, and a brand new listing caught my eye.  It was in the same neighborhood (that was our first choice) where we had tried to buy the first house.  We set up a showing right away.

While looking through the house, we both just knew it was the one.  It had everything we were looking for, with a few extras.  However, nothing is perfect.  The house was getting ready to be foreclosed, so it needed some work.  It needed to be cleaned, painted, new floors and carpet.  It needed a little more work than what we were hoping for, but that was the only negative.   

We made an offer a day later, which turned the deal into a short sale. This was in the middle of August, and we had to wait for the banks holding the mortgages on the house to approve our offer.  As of last week, we were still waiting.  We technically didn’t have a contract, because we didn’t want to start spending money on the inspection, mortgage application fees, etc., until we were sure the banks would approve the offer.

Last week, we were still waiting on the final bank holding the first mortgage, which is the no-brainer, because they would be paid in full.  We didn’t understand what was holding up their approval.  Turns out, they needed a signed contract to assure them, that the sellers really would be selling the house.  So as of last Thursday, we were officially under contract!

Hopefully the bank will get the approval processed- they already said they would, once we had a contract, and once they do that, we will close within 30 days.  But in the meantime, no one else can come along and make another offer on the house, while we wait for the bank. 

We are trying not to get too excited until we close (because you never know what can happen between now and then), but we definitely just got one step closer to moving.