It was a wonderful, little red brick house, totally remodeled and very close to where we live now. Of course, with it being the very first house we walked in, I wasn't ready to put in any offer and we continued looking at the other 5 houses on our list for that day. Well, before our lender approval was even finalized a week later, this beauty was off the market. I was pretty devastated but did take comfort in the fact that we couldn't have put in an offer anyway since we didn't have our approval papers ready yet.
Recently we found another totally remodeled house very close to our ideal area. It was a foreclosure and had been on the market forever. Well, I thought about it for 2 days and when I went to review it online to consider submitting an offer, I learned it too was off the market.
Then there was the remodeled foreclosure in an even better location priced 40k over our budget that we went to look at thinking we could low ball. Once we got there we were told there were already 6 offers on the table and a bidding war was underway - it was so discouraging I could barely get through the walk-through.
Yesterday we went back to one we had mixed feelings about. We loved the yard but it was a bit of a drive into work and the inside needed some upgrading to suit our tastes. Since we had first looked at it, it had gone into short sale and the price had dropped, so we thought it was worth a second look.
We left to look at 2 more after this one, still with some mixed feelings, when suddenly we found a great one that we really got excited about.
We both agreed we loved it and wanted to put in an offer immediately (if you know anything about me, I never make decisions this quickly, so you know it had to be reeeeeaaaaallllyyy speacial). The thing is that it's a short sale, meaning it's selling for less than the owner owes on it. So any offers must be approved by the seller's bank. This can take anywhere from 3 days to 3 months. Sometimes the bank will want to sit around and see what offers they get before they decide and then turn around and up the price. Other times the bank is desperate to recoup at least some of the money before they foreclose on the seller, so they accept any offer. We put the offer in today and will continue to hunt after we return from vacation the week after next. For the time being, we'll try to put this place on the back burner, since we don't want to get too attached to the house when we have no idea if or when we would get it. We'll keep everyone posted as we get status updates and continue the search.
