Keer “Unplugged”

You know how when there is a flood in an area, there is water all over the place, but it's not drinkable?  That is how dh and I feel right now.

Last week we went to Colorado to look for a house to buy.  There are houses EVERYWHERE there, and we had quite a good short list.  We looked at 18 houses in the first 3 days.  Then we chose our top 5 and looked at them again.  We then chose our top 2.

#1 house was great.  It was large enough for what we need.  It was only 11 miles from dh's new office.  But the price was a bit high, based on this formula I'd come up with to calculate the maximum price we could afford based on how many miles away from dh's office it was.  (Yes, I realize I am a total nerd.  What can I say? )  It was a foreclosure home that had been approved for a short sale.  So we wrote up an offer saying this is the MAX we can pay and let them know that we have a #2 that we'd be placing an offer on.  We sort of low-balled them, but hey, we were going to give it a shot.  We submitted the offer Friday morning and gave them till Monday at noon to accept it.

Monday apparently was the day the bank took over the home.  They hadn't even looked at it due to all the bureaucratic red tape, so we said sorry and submitted our offer to house #2.  House #2 had been on the market for almost a year (average days on the market there is 6 months).  It was BEAUTIFUL, but it was 26 miles from dh's office, which wasn't all that great.  The price was very good though.  So my dad (our Realtor) called the agent to let her know an offer was on the way.  She informed him that it had gone under contract THAT morning.

So we gave the bank with House #1 more time and said you have till 6 pm Tues.  At the end of Tues. they said they were very close to making a decision and they'd  have something for us first thing Wed.  They didn't.  In fact, they said that ***IF*** they gave us an answer at all, it wouldn't be for a few more days yet.  We said to forget it.

Oh yeah.  Have I mentioned that we sign our closing documents on this house on this coming up Monday, the 17th?  The movers arrive Tues. to start packing, and we are pulling out of town Sat. the 22nd.  We don't exactly have time to sit around waiting for something that MIGHT happen, especially if there is a good chance that it isn't going to happen.

So.  While we'd been waiting to hear any news, I looked on the internet to see if anything new had come on the market.  I was thinking about suggesting to dh that since we'd spent so much time with Dad and he knew what we were looking for, possibly if we found something that we liked, he could go check it out, and if he thought it'd work and took lots of pictures, we could place an offer for it.  But I didn't think dh would go for it.  But then he came and suggested that idea to ME!

There had been this one house that was on our short list before we went to CO.  But it went off the market before we got there.  But then a few days ago it came back on!  The pictures looked GREAT.  So we had Dad go over to check it out.  He took tons of pictures.  Still looked great - even better, in fact.  He said it looked great.  He found out the reason it was back on the market was because even though it had been under contract, the buyer's financing fell through.  Apparently the buyer is a high credit risk and could only get what is called a "hard lender," whatever that is.  The house is bank-owned, and they were not comfortable with his financing, so they set some additional conditions.  That is when the house went back on the market.

So we submitted a full-price offer on it first thing this morning.  But.  Is it REALLY back on the market???  Apparently they aren't able to consider our offer until the first deal falls through.  My dad isn't quite sure, and I CERTAINLY am not sure, just why the house is still showing up as active even though they are saying that it's still under contract.

So here we are, 8 days from turning possession of our home over to our buyers, and we don't have a home lined up in Colorado.  We have excellent credit.  We have a prequalification letter from our lender.  We finally have the income to purchase the kind of house that we need at this time in our lives.  We finally have the opportunity to not "make do."  There are TONS of homes for sale there.  But we can't seem to buy one to save our lives!!!

A lot of it is because of the lender-owned situation there.  It is not uncommon to see in a listing, "Please allow up to 7 days for a response to an offer." Supposedly the bank who owns the home we are interested in responds within 48 hours.  That is very short for this type of situation.  Both my Realtor here and the Realtors my dad has been talking with have said, "Well, when we have a time crunch situation, we won't even show foreclosure homes since they take longer."  But where we are going, that's all there is! My dad estimates that over half of the homes on the market there are foreclosure homes.  So sure, he could have avoided them all...and we would have had a list of about 5 to look at!

Needless to say, we are frustrated.  We aren't worried or panicked; we know that God holds us in the palm of His hand and that He has a home for us SOMEWHERE there.  But it is frustrating to be dealing with these owner banks who won't even bother with the politeness of a response.  We'd be thrilled with a "nah, this won't work," so that we could at least move on.  Or our current offer...is it able to be listed ANYWAY?

And oddly enough, I'd made an error in my formula, and we didn't really have to lowball House #1 after all.  But by this point, we are so fed up dealing with them that we feel like Vivian in Pretty Woman, with the store that wouldn't wait on her.  We'd love for them to accept our offer and for us to say, "Sorry, you missed your deadline.  No deal." I can picture her in my mind, standing there with her shopping bags saying, "Big mistake.  Huge." But they probably won't do that.

So now we wait.  If they do not accept our offer by Monday at 6 pm, we will most likely have to rent.  Neither dh nor I wants to do that - we don't want to have to move our stuff twice.  But we need a place to live!!!

I'll keep you posted.