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House Karma
It's 2:30am on the east coast and I'm not going to sleep this entire weekend. Some of you might remember that we went under contract but I wasn't feeling thrilled about it. Well, I/we decided that we were compromising on what we wanted too soon and that we were overpaying. I feel like such a jerk, but we pulled out of the contract and lost our $500 deposit. We could have just waited until after inspections and found a way out, but we thought the sellers should have our money since we were the ones who messed up.
The whole thing was really prompted by us seeing a house that we loved that was only $28K more than the other one. It was four bedrooms instead of three, had a basement, and a HUGE fenced yard. There's no garage and it has CRAZY floral carpet right when you walk in, but I'm planning to rip out any carpet in any house we buy and put down wood, so i don't mind. We could stay in that house forever.
We put in an offer right away (the house had only been on the market 36 hours) and now the sellers are "away for the weekend" (BS - they want to see if they get any other offers!) and want to wait until next week when they have time to look it over. We only bid $10K less than asking which is still more than 95% of the asking price. We're preapproved, have no sale and settlement contingency and can close whenever they want. I'm so worried that they'll get another offer because I don't think my nerves can tolerate a bidding war.
Lesson learned: burn and be burned.
Anyone else pull out of their contract or am I the only flake?
Re: House Karma
My Valentine Bookends (2~13~13, 2~15~09)
Don't feel bad and certainly don't beat yourself up.
My husband and I put an offer on a house recently and I never felt quite right about it. On paper it was a GREAT house and I really did love everything about it in person, but something just never felt right. They didn't even counter offer us, but did send us an email saying they would consider our offer if it was significantly higher. We said "No thank you" and the house was immediately snapped us by another buyer. I worried, briefly, that we had done the wrong thing and we should have made a higher offer and that we would NEVER find another house that had the space we needed and all the other things that were necessary. Our current house sold after three weeks on the market, so I was also feeling a huge time crunch.
Thankfully we found the perfect house last weekend. Driving through the neighborhood makes me happy. The house makes me happy. Being inside the house felt right...I didn't feel that way about the other house.
Hang in there.
I think you did the right thing pulling out of the other contract right away. That was honorable of you not to fight the deposit. We just went under contract last weekend and I took a sleeping pill two nights in a row because I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep during negotiations. We offered and gave them a 9pm deadline. They were originally told they were getting another offer that day. Then, the other offer was supposed to come the next morning. They obviously wanted to wait but we stood our ground and asked for a reply by 9pm. Our agent made the case that until another offer is in hand, talk means nothing and, if we walked, they could end up with no offers. In reality, we just didn't want to get into a bidding war. Like you, we were preapproved, no contingencies, and 20% down (good buyers in this market) so they countered and we accepted. We ended up paying 97% of asking price. The next morning we were told that the other buyers were pissed that the sellers didn't wait for their offer. We have now been told that there is a waiting list of people wanting to know if our deal falls through.
While it may be true that they are out of town, try not to let them drag their feet. Insist on a response shorty after they are back. Good luck!
Thanks everyone - I hope they really are on vacation! The seller agent apparently doesn't like WellsFargo (who we did our pre approval with) so today we did a second pre approval with his preferred lender. Hopefully that will give us an edge. We're prepared to pay full asking price if that's what it takes.
We saw another house today and it really enforced my stance that the one we offered on is the right one for us. I'm worried I won't get over it if it doesn't work out. Hopefully we'll know something on Monday!
ditto.
I think you did the right thing. I had two offers out simultaneously. A little different as one was a back up position to an auction that I came in 2nd on, so I wasn't legally bound and the other was an offer on a short-sale that the bank never responded to by my deadline so technically legally bound either, but I kept my offers open just in case I got one. I figured if both were magically accepted on the same day and then both claimed rights over the $1000 deposit I'd happy sacrifice it just to get one of the properties.
Neither one came through...
(The short-short was rejected last week (its going instead to auction next week) and the house from the initial auction just closed today to the first bidder). So I submitted offer #3 on a new house that I LOVE about 10 minutes ago!