I am waiting.......

I am waiting anxiously for a call from our Real Estate agent. We should be hearing back from the builder this morning. I am sure they will counter. We offered a fairly low amount for all the things we were asking for. So hopefully by tomorrow we will have a ratified contract. And then they can get started.

I was talking to the sales manager yesterday, and she said that everyone is on "High Alert" that we want to get in as quickly as possible. I am so excited!! It seems like everything is coming together!!

A few of you have asked if I could post the floor plan. Here it is. The model is the Emerson, and we are doing elevation one.

We are making a few small changes here and there but that is pretty much it. Instead of a two story open family room, we are doing a fifth bedroom and bath upstairs, I am also moving the laundry to the alcove in the master bedroom closet and turning the old laundry space into a big walk in pantry. We are also doing the sunroom extention on all three levels so it brings the square footage up to 5400. We are also doing a three car garage.

Ring phone ring.........

Are you sick of hearing about my house hunt yet???

Well yesterday we took the plunge. We signed a contract to build a new house!
The other day when I went our with our Real Estate agent one of the houses we went to look at took us to a neighborhood that was great. I didn't really care for that house (or any of the others we saw that night) but the yard of this house was GREAT!!! Huge (for this area) and FLAT!!!
We have search and hunted and begged and pleaded for a big flat yard. We have a big yard with the house we are in now, but we also have a HUGE HILL sloping into the trees. The kids used to like to play ball, but not anymore after chasing it down a ski slope 7956 times.

So we decided to go talk to the builder in huge yard land and see if they could build me something to love. I honestly did not think I was that picky until I started house hunting. I guess that is one problem with having too much choice. So my agent and I toured the model and it is beautiful!!! They can do five bedrooms upstairs and it has 4 baths all upstairs too. I get my laundry upstairs, and a big pantry. What mom of many could ask for more?? But there is more!! We also have a Sun room extension on all three levels and the basement is fully finished with a media room!!
So I was really excited to find a house I was really finally happy about. And I knew that Rob would love the yards. So I took him the next day and he was thrilled!! He says this is what he has been looking for for the last two years.

So off we go!!!

We signed all of the initial contracts yesterday and gave them our deposit. Now there are a few things we asked for that we are waiting for approval on then they will pull permits and we are off and running. I am so excited. They are also going to try and have it done for us by the end of August so we only have to ask for one extra month on the rent and we will hopefully be in by the time school starts!!

Offer Update

Well we did not get that house!
I am bummed!!
I talked to our agent and there were 20 offers on the house!!!!! WHAT THE HECK!!!!
The jerks just hold it out there and keep everyone on the line, hoping.

But OH WELL!!

My agent sent over 9 new listings, and there are 5 of them I am REALLY interested in! We are going to see them this afternoon, if I can get a hold of Rob and get him home from work ASAP!

Holy Cow, I am really starting to hate this home buying thing! I just want the perfect house with the perfect yard at a great price, is that to much to ask? ---I don't think so!

Offer update

So after much thought and research we decided to up our offer by $25,000. We still feel like this house is a great deal, even at the higher price.

So our agent updated the offer and our bank upped the amount on the pre-approval letter and the offer was faxed over yesterday afternoon.

So now it is just a waiting game. Hopefully we will know soon. I hate not knowing.

If it is meant to be it will happen, if not, there is something else better for us out there.

Housing.....why do we need it anyway?

So since my last post about the housing situation more has happened.

The following Monday our landlord called and wanted to talk about selling the house we are renting to us. It is a great house. And we have talked to him in the past about the price he would be willing to take for it. But it was always higher than we really thought it was worth in the current market. He has been dumbfounded about how low the prices in the neighborhood have dropped. So he found out some information that is part of one of the real estate recovery programs the government is trying to introduce. The one he is trying to do would pretty much make up any loss he has had on the house since he had to move on orders in 2007.

Our real estate agent, who also happens to be his agent, does not think the package will apply to him. His rank is quite high and he makes a lot more money than most military people. And these packages are designed to be VERY hard to qualify for. So she thinks he will either have to do a short sale or find someone else to rent after we move.

So as the government finalizes the rules, they should be out mid-April we decided to keep looking. And if we found something fabulous we would move on it no matter if the landlord sale thing would work out or not.

So I went out again to a house that I had tried to look at before. The day before we were to go to Great Wolf Lodge we went to see this house. (it is house number 1 ) At that time we couldn't get in to see it. There was no lock box on the door. So my agent called the listing agent, and only got the office and was told a variety of lies about why there was no key on the house. So she ended up threatening to report them because to have a house listed on MLS without a lock box is a $1000 fine. So the listing agent promptly took it off the market.
We went on vacation and came back and decided to keep looking. Our agent sent us a bunch of new listings to look at, and the same house was there but for $40,000 less than when I tried to go and see it before. SCORE!!
So we went to see it, and it is great!! It really fits our family's needs. 5 great size bedrooms upstairs. Fully finished basement, three car garage, great storage and more. It is not super fancy inside, I think the poor people who originally built it spent all their money getting the size, with all the bump-outs and additional rooms, that they did not have enough to finish it really nice inside. But the finishing touches are easy to do and will not cost that much.
So we put in an offer! That next day we submitted an offer for 12oo over list with extra so we could ask for closing costs. Essentially we offered 14000 more so we could get the 14000 back for closing costs.

So today, we get a call. There are multiple offers on the table. Give us your best and highest by 11PM. So now we have this huge dilemma. What the heck to we offer. We have no clue what anyone else has offered. We don't even know how many other offers there are. The bank said specifically that they will take no escalation clauses. So that really sucks! (an escalation clause says, "we will beat your highest offer by x amount") So we wouldn't have to pay more than absolutely necessary. But they won't do that. They want absolutely as much for the property as they can get.
So we are just sick. We really, really want this house. But don't' want to pay much more than we originally offered. We could just say, our original offer was our "best and highest" and just see how things go. But I think if we do that, we will lose it! ARGH!!!
The comps in the neighborhood are all over the place. And the tax assessment is for $140,000 more than we offered. So there is lots of up potential.
Man, I don't know what to do!!
I need to talk more to Rob, right now he just wants to say, our first offer is the highest, but then there is no taking it back, no second chances! I don't know what to do!!