Patience Pays Off

A prior post disappeared into the digital dumpster, so my statement that we put in an offer on a house got buried into the comments. Our Monday evening was eventful as we put in an offer, got a counter offer, and fairly quickly countered this. Our original offer had been placed with an expiration of noon on Wednesday.

Driving this entire process was the dilemma of moving from or remaining in the house we are currently renting. Basically we had an ultimatum from the landlord to get out at the end of July (maybe he could spare a week of August) or sign up again through the winter and remain until April. We needed to give 30 days notice if we wanted to stay, so that left us with only the working week.

We were still pretty far apart on price at the end of Monday. There were also concerns that the closing date we proposed wouldn't work for the current owners. Tuesday came and went without a word. We talked a bit and resigned ourselves to staying in place through the winter. We had a number in mind we wouldn't go above, and the seller was still farther from it than we were.

On Wednesday we discussed with the agent where things stood. More specifically we said "I guess that's that, should we get our deposit back now?" Word had been that the seller was getting another offer, but as we had been the last to speak I wasn't going to change what we had on the table without the seller response. She indicated she didn't think the deal was done and if we could, wait until Thursday. We agreed.

Thursday came and by noon I had to leave the office for an all afternoon meeting. There had still been no word. By the time I came back from the meeting the terms had been worked out. We ended up where we expected on price, but I'm glad that it worked out and the seller was willing to come down more than half way to meet us in the end.

We got the papers today. Now we need to finish coordinating financing quickly, pack our stuff and arrange to move in mid August. Once it was clear to our landlord we were going we managed to get a couple weeks out of him, so at the moment it looks like we'll have at least a full weekend to make our move.

More on the house in the next post.