Our Offer was Accepted - Part 1

We put an offer on a house… and even in this crazy market, it was accepted!

It has been a very long road! We began casually looking at houses in January, even before we listed our house. There weren’t many we were interested in.

We had some very specific criteria. In fact, as we looked at houses, we had to “lower” our criteria because we were unable to find something that ticked all of our boxes.

Here is a list of our wants:

·         Single story

·         Fireplace

·         Open concept living

·         Air conditioning

·         Dual pane windows

·         Minimum 3/2, but preferably a 4/2

·         Quiet street

·         2 car attached garage

·         Pool (for The Husband) Not a deal breaker, just a “it’d be nice”

Overall, we didn’t feel like we were too picky, but we also found that finding everything in one house was very difficult.

Once we put our house on the market, we began looking in earnest. That was in early April. We scoured homes online. We were in constant contact with our realtor. We went to so many open houses. We despaired of ever finding anything that would work for our family. We even lowered our expectations on our criteria. To me, the most important thing on our list was finding a single story, but we even started looking at two stories because single stories were almost non-existent in our market.

After looking for weeks, we really started to get worried about where we were going to live when we had to be out of our house. We were very blessed to have several different family members say we could live with them; and it got to the point where we thought that was going to have to be what we were going to have to do. There just weren’t any homes that met our needs.

We looked at so many houses online, and I looked at over 40 houses in person. We just weren’t finding what we wanted. 2 weeks ago, a single story home came on the market that both The Husband and I liked online. We immediately contacted our realtor about it and I was able to get into the home the first day it was on the market. I really liked it. It actually met all of our criteria.

The following Saturday, we went as a family to the open house. (We promised The Kids that we would show them any house before we put any offers in.) The Husband and The Kids liked the house as well as I did and we decided to put in an offer. The realtor at the open house told us that they already had a strong offer so to put in our best and highest offer. We did that. We offered over the asking price and did not ask for any concessions. We offered to put about 2% down in earnest money. In addition, we wrote a cover letter introducing ourselves and our family. We wrote about how much we loved the home, how many other houses we’d seen, and how perfect we thought this house would be for our family.

The owner countered our offer (actually, it was a multiple counter offer so she was countering our offer, along with other people’s) with counters that we felt were unfair and we weren’t comfortable accepting. (We completely understand wanting to get as much money as possible, but not to the extent of taking advantage of people; and that’s what we felt the counter offer was: trying to take advantage of us.) Even though we thought it was the perfect house for us, we knew with the terms she was offering it wasn't the right house for us and we had to walk away.

Unexpectedly, this has become a super long post so I decided to break it up into 2 parts. Stay tuned for Part 2 of Our Offer Was Accepted!