Change of Plans

A couple of days after our offer was rejected [see last post for more on our initial offers], a few things changed with our plans. We were initially only planning on staying in the area for a year and had a max budget that we could spend on a house. Given the numbers, this max would allow us to at least break even when compared to renting and perhaps turn a profit if we found a fixer upper and got it for a good price.

So, a couple of things changed that allowed us to make this budget a little higher. My husband had a conversation with his boss and they decided that it would be best for him to stay for at least 2 years. 2 years meant that we would be saving on 2 years rent rather than 1 and gave us a larger budget to play with. I was very excited [of course this is not the only thing we were taking into account: we were also looking at the additional interest, taxes, insurance, etc. that we would have to pay].

We talked with our lender and figured out what we would be now willing to pay monthly for the house. And then we sat on the new number for a couple of days and discussed whether or not we thought we could sell “our future colonial” for more than this new amount in 2 years.

In the meantime we went looking at other houses in ‘our neighborhood’ and they were either in much worse shape or still out of our budget.


[Quite the kitchen! Yes, that is an oven above the range!]

So, we decided to go for it and made another offer on the house. This time it was 77% of the asking price. The owners sat on this offer for 4-5 days [we were getting very irritated with how long everything was taking with them at this point]. Then they countered!! Their offer was 87% of the asking price [wahoo! something that we can respond to, at this point they had just said no to all of our offers] We countered their counter with an offer of 82% of the listing price and we were at an agreement!

But don’t get too excited, the closing process was even more troublesome than coming to an agreement…