My Contract is Accepted!

After the most time consuming and complicated process I've ever endured in making a purchase, I am happy to announce that my offer on my gem house has finally been accepted!

What a ride. The whole thing has left me feeling a bit shagged and fagged and fashed, it being an ordeal of no small expenditure. Since your humble narrator spoke with you last, many folds in the story have played out. Firstly, we decided that we had to get the house inspected. My agent was of the opinion that the $200 inspection was worth doing based on his assessment of the situation at the time, I agreed. As it turns out the condition of the gem house was as good as could be expected from a 50-75 year old house. By the way, it's weird that nobody knows exactly when houses were built, I digress. Problems were not critical, one hurdle overcome.

After the inspection I was excited, thinking I'm about to be a homeowner. Everything seemed like it was going to work out. That feeling was encouraged by word from the sellers lender that there were 'no red flags' in her short sell application. All I could do at this point was wait for her application to be approved.

Two long weeks later I get a call from my agent. He starts the conversation by saying 'I didn't want to call you until I fully understood what was going on' not 'your offer is approved'. Anyway, he goes on to explain that the sellers lender had come up with extra stipulations at the last freaking gasp. All of a sudden the lender required the seller to either come up with $5,700 cash or sign a $10,000 promissory note to recoup the losses from the short sell, or they would allow the property to go into foreclosure and my offer would be lost. The sellers agent came to my agent and asked if we could bear the extra cost. After laughing in the sellers agent's face, my agent sent a lengthy email to the sellers lender and agent explaining how strange and frustrating the process has been and how it would be in everybody's interest not to let this offer fall apart. As he spoke to me my mind raced all the way back to looking at houses again and I nearly threw the phone through the window.

Surprisingly, after apparently 'seeing the light,' the seller agreed to sign the $10,000 note. I was pretty surprised by that but my agent had the inside scoop. He explained to me that a foreclosure looks much worse on a credit report than a bankruptcy. He thinks that the seller is going to get rid of the house and then declare bankruptcy to try to get out of paying the note. Also, he said that they were going to go ahead and cash my earnest money check. Cash my earnest money check? Doesn't that mean that they accepted my offer? I wrote back. 'That's my understanding', he said.

...should I uncork the champagne?

It wasn't quite what I was expecting, but good news none the less. At this point all that's left is to hurry up and get the appraisal field work done and turned in, get the mortgage underwriting submitted and approved, get the appraisal approved, buy homeowners insurance, make sure there aren't any loose ends on the sellers side, and try to schedule a closing with the title company. Easy...right? Oh yeah, and get all that done by the end of next week.