Aren’t you trying to buy a home?

In case anyone forgot… LJ and I are currently trying to buy a home. I say ‘trying’ because it feels like everything is working against us to make this as annoying a possible. We aren’t using a realtor because LJ is a lawyer and can therefor collect the realtor’s fee (that’s 3% cash at close). So it’s worth a LOT of money if we do this on our own. Only one problem, we have to do everything on our own.  Basically, I’m finding out the realtors do a lot more than I thought they did! 

Some of you have asked where we are with the whole process. Let me break it down:

1. Found a house we liked
2. Made offer
3. Negotiated back and forth until we agreed on a price
4. Signed a contract
5. Had an inspector come look at it
6. Found out it needs foundation work and new: roof, AC, ducts, water heater and heater
7. Tell sellers we want all this fixed
8. Sellers say ‘ok’ but they want to raise the price of the home 10k
9. We are happy because this is 30k worth of work so we say yes
10. Option period is extended
11. Seller has their foundation guy out to look at home; he says it needs one minor adjustment
12. Sellers decide they do not want to fix everything
13. Sellers offer to fix one tiny thing in foundation and to give us cash at closing for everything else; price of home will not change
14. We hire our own guy to look at foundation since we think it needs WAY more work
15. Our guy says it needs 18 exterior and 2 interior piers adjusted
16. We hire roof guy to take a look at roof and give us an estimate

This brings us to today. We’re still waiting on both the foundation and roof guy to give us reports. This way we can send them to the sellers and say we want the foundation fixed to our standards. If they are willing to do this we then give them an estimate for cash at close for everything else. This has to be done by tomorrow because our option period is about to end. So, if the sellers do not agree to our foundation guy’s assessment, the house falls through. If the sellers see our estimate for cash at closing and decide that it’s way too high, the house falls through. If we go through all of this and the appraiser comes out and the house is appraised for way too low and the sellers won’t come down because they are already giving us a pile of cash at close, the house falls through.

Go ahead, ask me if I think everything will turn out ok… grrrrrr

And remember, if we actually do get this house, we’ll have to FIX everything before moving in. BUT if we do get this house, once we move in we’ll have a house that shouldn’t need any major work for a LONG time (silver lining).

If this one falls through, I think I’m just going to tell LJ to pick out a house and just let me know when to move it. I’m so tired of this. 

- Kris