We'll Take Door #2

Here's how we came to buy a totally different house than the one we had planned.

After our offer on the house was accepted, we had 10 business days to get a professional home inspection and make sure we are happy with it. We can back out of the deal at any time during this period without penalty. The 10-day deadline ended two days ago, on Wednesday. Life was pretty crazy until that day!

We had our inspection on March 3, a week ago last Wednesday. Unfortunately, it revealed an unpleasant surprise: while the house was built well originally, the homeowners had added a finished basement. And apparently they did it without permits and they did a horrible job of it. The basement looks great, but behind the walls they had rerouted the plumbing and rewired the electricity totally wrong.

They had also shortened the garage to add the downstairs hallway, and during the inspection David found that he could just barely fit the truck in there. And the new garage wall does not meet fire code. Also, the furnace needed servicing, the gutters were overflowing, and the dryer vent had detached and was spraying lint into the attic.

All of these problems are fixable and the house was still not a bad house. And it is normal for the buyers to ask the sellers to pay for these problems, which we expected they probably would. But the news certainly dampened our enthusiasm.

After the inspection, we scheduled an on-site estimate from a plumber for the following Monday, and got estimates by phone for the electrical work and the garage wall. In the end, the total we would have needed from the sellers was over $2500.

While we waited for the appointment with the plumber, I had a brief look around online to see if any other interesting houses had come on the market, just to explore all our options. I didn't expect to find anything. But I did!

Remember that gorgeous condo I raved about early on in our search, that broke my heart when it was sold? Well, another one in the same community had just come on the market! It's a little smaller, but not by much, and it is actually in a better location than the other one - quieter street, larger driveway, better view.

So "just for fun" we went to look at the new condo last Friday morning - the community manager opened the door for us. We loved it even more than we expected to. It has many advantages over the other house, including less stairs and no owner additions (it is brand new). Our realtor graciously cleared a spot for us in her very busy schedule that afternoon, and we made an official offer!

So last weekend, we were a ball of nerves. Many things could go wrong with the condo offer: it is bank-owned, and banks aren't known for their punctuality. So we might not even get a response by Wednesday, when we have make a decision on the house. And if we did get a response, it might be a counteroffer that was too high. Then another problem arose over the weekend: our particular type of mortgage loan (FHA for first-time homebuyers) has special requirements for condos! So we might not even qualify for it, even if the bank did accept our offer.

We spent most of the weekend trying to iron out the FHA-condo issue, and trying to decide what we would do if we didn't get the condo in time. Do we still want the house? Should we back out and start over? I didn't really like that idea - the house is still a nice one, and living in an apartment sucks.

But happily, everything came together early this week. On Monday we finally found out that the new condo is not actually a condo at all! It's a "fee simple townhouse," which means it's a house like any other one. Therefore there are no special requirements for our loan. Then, Tuesday afternoon, we got a response from the bank! And they had accepted our offer!

So Wednesday morning, the day of the deadline, we met with our realtor to officially withdraw from the house and move forward with the townhouse. It was a little scary, but we're very happy with our decision. We feel terrible for the owners of the house we almost bought - it is hard to imagine their disappointment. But they do have serious problems with their house, so this can't be entirely surprising. And now they can fix them before the next buyer runs into the same issue.

Here's the really surprising part - later that same day, they offered to give us $10,000 off the sales price AND fix all the problems that were found during the inspection. Holy cow!! If only that offer had come before we found the townhouse, we would have been thrilled. We did consider it, but both of us concluded that even with that amazing offer, we wouldn't be nearly as happy there as we would be in the townhouse. So we had to say no. They have since asked us for the inspection report, which we gladly provided to them, and I'm sure they're going to fix the problems. I hope they find another buyer soon.

So who knows what obstacles we still might face until closing, but everything looks great for now. We are scheduled to close on April 5, and we'll try to make it happen even earlier. See the next post for pictures!