Dammitsomuch.
Hello fellow COVID-19 survivors! Been a few weeks, figured I should update with the news, such as it is.
So when last I wrote, we were going under contract to sell this house, and making an offer on a home in Richmond. So buckle up, people.
Our offer on that home received a pretty shitty counter-offer--as our realtor put it, the lady selling it had an "unrealistic" view of her home's worth. It happens, and we weren't that in love with it anyway, so c'est la vie. Around the same time, a home we really did love popped up--it's big enough for us, very nice, in our top-choice neighborhood, and nicely situated. We knew it would be a hot property, so we put in the best offer we could--and it got accepted! Whoo-hoo! So we're currently under contract to buy that place, and it's been moving along fine--insurance, financing, inspections, etc.
But it's just never that easy, is it LJ? We then got word that our buyer here is a Disney employee, and found out she was being furloughed this month. But she thought she could still make it work, either by getting a co-signer or using vacation time to maintain her income, at least long enough to get through the closing. We didn't want to go back on the market (and really couldn't so long as we were under contract anyway), so we went with it and hoped it would work out. But it didn't--she couldn't keep the financing, so she backed out and we cancelled the contract. Back on the market we go for showings and whatnot, but so far despite lots of activity on Zillow, no actual bites in terms of showings or offers. We have a (virtual) open house scheduled for Saturday, which will hopefully attract some interest.
But in the meantime, we naturally have to let the Richmond seller know that we're no longer under contract to sell. And our realtor advises us that the response will probably be to change our purchase contract to a first-right contract. I'm not 100% clear on what that means, but I gather the gist is that she can go back to the market for additional offers that aren't contingent on the sale of another property (as ours is), and take one if it comes along, which it almost certainly would, because it's a great house.
So in the absence of a co-signer ourselves (my income isn't high enough to qualify for a non-contingent loan, unfortunately), our only hope is that she takes pity on us and gives us some more time to find another buyer and keep going. There's a chance that might happen--she didn't seem to be in a huge hurry to vacate anyway. But from a purely business perspective, obviously we should expect her to take the next solid offer that comes along, and say to hell with us.
So that's all a huge bummer, obviously. Trying to buy and sell a home during a pandemic was a bad idea, that I knew, but we certainly didn't anticipate this massive global wrinkle! The bright side is that there's nothing firm saying we HAVE to move by a certain date, so if we need more time to sell, and to find another place to buy, we can have it. And all we'd be out so far is the cost of the inspection on the house in Richmond, which was already completed.
BUT! In a sign of how quickly things happen, as I was typing this up, I got a call from our realtor here that we'd received a new offer! It's not a GREAT offer, but it's good enough. We're going to make a slight counter-offer, but otherwise I'm thinking we'll jump on it so we can get back under contract ASAP and keep the Richmond seller on the hook. So here's hoping!