I know I said I would get right back to you about what house
we chose. I am so sorry it has taken me forever to get back to you on this. I
had a few people pick both houses actually! In the end we picked option number …..
Wait for it....
ONE!!!!
We bought the first house! The deal is done! We could not be
more excited to move into our cute new home with our dog and start making improvements!
To give those of you who have never bought a house the break
down here are the phases of the process we have gone though:
1.
We put in an offer. First you sign a bunch of
contracts with your agent and figure out what price you want to offer. In our
case, there were three other offers coming on the house. So we knew offering
less than asking was out of the question. To our REALTORS advice we also opted
not to ask for concessions for closing costs. She thought this would give us
more room for negotiations on the house for repairs after our inspection and
she was right.
2.
You wait. You wait for the seller to get back to
you. In our case they got back to us about 24 hours later. They countered with
a few changes and after Mr. A got pissed off that we were not getting a deal
(even though we were getting a house for WELL under our budget) we settled on
the details. Sometimes you need to know when you have found a good deal for
you.
3.
You wait some more. You wait while your realtor
and their realtor drum up all the paperwork on the offer and you sign away
again.
4.
Inspection. We have what in Texas is called an 7
day “option period”. Basically what this means is we give earnest money to the
sellers of $100 so they will not sell the house to anyone else, while we got
the inspection done. We had 7 days to get it done, and get cracking on asking
for repairs. Two days after the offer was accepted we had our inspection done. (more
on this later)
5.
Negotiations on repairs. After we tabulated all
the repairs that the inspector suggested we had our REALTOR ask the sellers for
about $2600 in repairs. They basically laughed at us and said they would do
$750… they suck. We settled on $1000 in repairs with them also having an electrician
come out and fix all of the issues with the electrical system. So with that it
worked out to be about $1500 in repairs. So BAM done.
6.
Final Contract and amendments. We signed away on
our final negotiations, including getting that totally bad ass picnic table you
see in the listing, and signed the final contracts today! Woot Woot!
So there you have it. We are now out of our 7 day option
period and the house is ours (mostly). We still need to get to closing. We gave
them an escrow check and are closing on April 25th! In a month Mr.
A, Harry and I will be closing on our first house! I am so pumped up right now!
Now we get to the fun stuff… picking paint colors to cover
up that horrible red wall and possibly paint the fireplace! Who’s with me!?
2 comments:
Wait, I thought you said you went for the newly listed one (that didn't already have all of the offers on it). That's why I thought you got the other one -- its listing date was later.
I love the living room and the master! I can see why you're so excited to move in!
Congrats! You guys are going to have a ball setting everything up.
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