Homeowners Yay!!
After six months of exhausting, emotionally shattering and seemingly unending househunting, Tony and I today signed a contract for a house!!!
We had already narrowly missed out on a house we were trying to buy several weeks ago, and had made offers on another one, which had been rejected as the owners wanted to go to auction (this Saturday - guess we don't need to go after all :P )
Anyway, lots of luck and chance and my wonderful father, who I don't think I can thank enough, and we managed to get a house that we both loved as soon as we walked in, and is perfect for us in every way.
Basically, we saw the house for the first time on Saturday Afternoon, after a rather lazy debate about whether we could be bothered going out again to look at one more house. Luckily we decided to, and loved the house. It was the first week the house was on the market, and therefore the first open house. We could tell that the were other people looking who were seriously interested. A sure sign that we should move quickly, and we'd already learnt that lesson the hard way with the other house we missed out on :P
We made some quick calls to our respective parents to let them know we had found the house we wanted. We got the usual warnings not to get too attached, and that there was no guarantee we would get it. "Yeah, yeah, thanks. Good advice. We want this house!"
My dad booked an inspection for him and my mum on Monday, and they both liked the house too (naturally, since Tony and I have good taste and have been proven to be incredibly picky when househunting).
My father, negotiator extraordinaire, (I mean seriously, I have never seen anyone able to make money like him. Someone once paid him to have a fridge) was very nicely willing to do all the wheeling and dealing for us, and he called the agent on Monday evening to put in a starting offer (44k less than the asking price), which was rejected :(
So the next day he called back and put a second offer in (now 24k less than asking price). Also rejected.
I'm starting to get worried at this point. I love this house and I don't want to lose it if someone jumps in quickly with a higher offer. My dad and Tony manage to convince me that ringing up and just telling them we will pay asking price is not the way to go. The agent has said that even though we are the only people who have had a second inspection, several other people have booked second inspections, and so our offers are likely to continue to be rejected until they have let other people have a chance to see it again and make offers.
We managed to wrangle a building and pest inspection for Wednesday morning at 10am, and my dad went along as well.
The inspector told my father that he could find nothing wrong at all with the house, and that it had several very nice features and was incredibly low maintenance (good for me and T, since we're lazy).
My father right then and there made a third offer. Even though we had decided that we would offer 14k less than asking price, he made an executive decision, based on whatever superpower he uses to read people and make money, and offered 19k less instead. While the owners were deciding, someone else submitted the exact same offer as us (we only just got in there first, so happy that my dad was on the scene, rather than at home waiting for the report from the inspector), and another person called to say they wanted to make an offer. They also submitted the same offer as we did.
But....we were in there first, and the owners accepted our offer, despite the fact that one of the other parties may have been willing to go higher.
Dad brings us the contracts so that we can sign them and he can go and exchange them with the owners solicitor. While he is doing that and waiting for the meeting, the people who made the 3rd offer apparently walked into the real estate agents office with a check for the deposit on an offer only 4k less than asking price. Thankfully the agent was very moral and did the right thing by us, since legally he could have accepted the check as our contracts had not yet been exchanged.
So....contracts were exchanged, and now we just have to wait out the settlement period until we can move in and have to start paying off our mortgage (Boo!)
I have called everyone I can think of to let them know, and Tonys parents want to take us to dinner to celebrate.
Funnily enough, when Tony first told me that they had accepted our offer, I was feeling happy, but it was a slightly surreal happiness. As the day went on, and contracts were signed, and stories were told that made it clear how very close and lucky it was that we got the place at all, I got more and more excited. It wasn't until I actually started phoning my friends to tell them that I suddenly hit the 'hyper-excited- bouncing-around-and-squeeing' stage.
More Photos of the house can be found on my flickr page. They start here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/meerclar/463827996/in/photostream/
We had already narrowly missed out on a house we were trying to buy several weeks ago, and had made offers on another one, which had been rejected as the owners wanted to go to auction (this Saturday - guess we don't need to go after all :P )
Anyway, lots of luck and chance and my wonderful father, who I don't think I can thank enough, and we managed to get a house that we both loved as soon as we walked in, and is perfect for us in every way.
Basically, we saw the house for the first time on Saturday Afternoon, after a rather lazy debate about whether we could be bothered going out again to look at one more house. Luckily we decided to, and loved the house. It was the first week the house was on the market, and therefore the first open house. We could tell that the were other people looking who were seriously interested. A sure sign that we should move quickly, and we'd already learnt that lesson the hard way with the other house we missed out on :P
We made some quick calls to our respective parents to let them know we had found the house we wanted. We got the usual warnings not to get too attached, and that there was no guarantee we would get it. "Yeah, yeah, thanks. Good advice. We want this house!"
My dad booked an inspection for him and my mum on Monday, and they both liked the house too (naturally, since Tony and I have good taste and have been proven to be incredibly picky when househunting).
My father, negotiator extraordinaire, (I mean seriously, I have never seen anyone able to make money like him. Someone once paid him to have a fridge) was very nicely willing to do all the wheeling and dealing for us, and he called the agent on Monday evening to put in a starting offer (44k less than the asking price), which was rejected :(
So the next day he called back and put a second offer in (now 24k less than asking price). Also rejected.
I'm starting to get worried at this point. I love this house and I don't want to lose it if someone jumps in quickly with a higher offer. My dad and Tony manage to convince me that ringing up and just telling them we will pay asking price is not the way to go. The agent has said that even though we are the only people who have had a second inspection, several other people have booked second inspections, and so our offers are likely to continue to be rejected until they have let other people have a chance to see it again and make offers.
We managed to wrangle a building and pest inspection for Wednesday morning at 10am, and my dad went along as well.
The inspector told my father that he could find nothing wrong at all with the house, and that it had several very nice features and was incredibly low maintenance (good for me and T, since we're lazy).
My father right then and there made a third offer. Even though we had decided that we would offer 14k less than asking price, he made an executive decision, based on whatever superpower he uses to read people and make money, and offered 19k less instead. While the owners were deciding, someone else submitted the exact same offer as us (we only just got in there first, so happy that my dad was on the scene, rather than at home waiting for the report from the inspector), and another person called to say they wanted to make an offer. They also submitted the same offer as we did.
But....we were in there first, and the owners accepted our offer, despite the fact that one of the other parties may have been willing to go higher.
Dad brings us the contracts so that we can sign them and he can go and exchange them with the owners solicitor. While he is doing that and waiting for the meeting, the people who made the 3rd offer apparently walked into the real estate agents office with a check for the deposit on an offer only 4k less than asking price. Thankfully the agent was very moral and did the right thing by us, since legally he could have accepted the check as our contracts had not yet been exchanged.
So....contracts were exchanged, and now we just have to wait out the settlement period until we can move in and have to start paying off our mortgage (Boo!)
I have called everyone I can think of to let them know, and Tonys parents want to take us to dinner to celebrate.
Funnily enough, when Tony first told me that they had accepted our offer, I was feeling happy, but it was a slightly surreal happiness. As the day went on, and contracts were signed, and stories were told that made it clear how very close and lucky it was that we got the place at all, I got more and more excited. It wasn't until I actually started phoning my friends to tell them that I suddenly hit the 'hyper-excited- bouncing-around-and-squeeing' stage.
More Photos of the house can be found on my flickr page. They start here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/meerclar/463827996/in/photostream/