Sunday, March 22: When we had our house For Sale by Owner, one particular guy was interested but never did follow through. He emailed Mark out of the blue tonight and wanted to see the house. Mark passed along his number and the guy called within the hour. He came over at 7:30pm to look at our house and loved it. He said he would definitely be in touch. Meanwhile, Mark called our realtor (whom we just listed with a week ago Friday) and told him about the situation. He mentioned that another realtor had called him today and that her client came by our house this past Friday and was interested in the house and she said that an offer might be coming soon.
The next three days were a bidding war essentially. The guy that had looked Sunday evening came back twice and the realtor's client made an initial low offer. We countered that offer and told the fsbo guy that we had another offer on the table. He then made an initial offer and we went back to the realtor. Her client found out there was another offer and upped her offer to above listing price. The guy made a second offer but it wasn't near hers at all so we accepted the offer from the realtor and her client on Thursday the 26th. We were ecstatic! 19 days on the market and we sold for more than listing price!! Woohoo! It doesn't get any better than that.
We found out that she wanted to close on May 8 (she's moving from out of state and needs that date specifically) so on Friday the 27th, we immediately began searching for houses. We basically had a little over a month before we had to be out of our house so we were in a bit of a crunch. Most of the houses we were looking at had possession dates of 30 days so we basically had about a week to find something so that we could move from one house to the other. Talk about stress! We had been browsing online for months already so we had a couple of ideas on some houses that we liked. We had even gone to some open houses and we were able to weed out some that we thought were potential keepers, but weren't. We were out for about 4 hours on Friday and found one house that we sort of liked. The house that we really liked was unable to be seen so we had to wait until Sunday. Mark's note: As we were driving along, Eric, our realtor from Remax asked me if I was interested in a foreclosure. I said absolutely. We went by to see it. It was phenomenally large! It was well north of 3200 sq ft, 4 BR, 3 bath, colossal kitchen, the works. The neighborhood is one of the nicest neighborhoods in Champaign. The only issue was when they foreclosed on the owners, they turned the power off and it rained, and the sump pump obviously didn't keep water out of the huge finished basement. They hired a company to come in and clean it all out (cut the drywall out about 2 feet above the floor all the way around). But it rained again, and the water came back, so when we looked at it, it had about 3 inches of standing water. We seriously thought about this home (it needed a LOT of work and we were very concerned about mold and water coming back in the future, it seemed like a lot of water for not a lot of rain) but the price was right. It was $110,000 below what the owners purchased it for 2 years ago. 4 buyers looked at it that day right after us and it was sold that night. Addendum: about a week later I was talking with our friends who used to live next to this home, and he told me that there had been water issues there for years. Things happen for a reason...
Sunday the 29th : We went out looking again and we were able to see the house that we had liked online. We fell in love with it and put an offer in later that night. They came back with another number that night and we put out another number also. The next day, Monday the 30th, we couldn't settle on a price and were going back and forth between $5,000. It was not an issue of whether we could go up because we could, but Mark just didn't feel peace about it. He felt like the Lord was telling him not to go any higher. So, we didn't and we didn't get that house. Mark's note: The nice thing about that house was that it had a finished basement. It really didn't need any work, but the back yard was a little smaller than we were wanting. As Jennifer and I really prayed about this house, I believe the Lord was testing our faith. The Lord gave me a number for this house, and he told me to stick to it, for whatever reason. We walked away, and it was one of the hardest things I've done. To be honest, we thought when we walked away, the owners would realize what was going on, and they would lower the price. We were wrong. Ironically enough, we looked on line a week later, and they had lowered the price on the home $5,000. Things happen for a reason...
After being extremely bummed we went out again on Tuesday. Our realtor had some new houses to show us and we liked 2 of them, the second once especially. It was in the Sawgrass Subdivision - a newer subdivision - and was owned by the builder. We liked it but were a little skeptical about getting our hopes up as we had before. We slept on it that night and got up the next morning and took another look.
Our realtor was leaving on Wednesday afternoon for 5 days so if we wanted this house we needed to jump on it and not wait until he came back. We looked at it again on April 1st and put in the offer that afternoon. We got a call later saying the seller wasn't willing to go down that much, but as Mark and our realtor were talking he got a phone call from her. We prayed and waited for a call back. He called back and said that she had accepted our offer. Praise God! Mark's note: We did some fancy negotiations to get our asking price, which suited me just fine. I'm really only happy when I feel like I got a deal. I can't really expect her to do too much to the property before we move in because from start to finish, she ended up dropping the price $32,000.
April 3rd was the inspection on our current home. We were pretty nervous as we've heard these inspections can be deal breakers sometimes. We got word on the following Monday morning that the buyer of our house wasn't concerned with the little things listed on the inspection and wasn't going to have us fix anything! Praise God! We didn't have to fix anything!!! Mark's note: Actually, I've been fixing things for the past 4 years that we've owned our home. We've redone most of the kitchen, the whole bath, a new roof, new light fixtures, rewiring, a basement remodel, exterior window work, and we painted the entire home. We gave her a sweet deal on a nice home. We will miss this home as we've spent most of our married life here, and it's the only home Madalyn knows. There's lots of memories, but better things are to come.
Now we're just waiting. We have our inspection on our new home today, April 10th, and we close on both houses on May 8th! I've started packing boxes here and there and we're getting super excited to move into something bigger before the babies arrive.
Our new house is 2 years old with 4 bedrooms, 3 bath, with a full unfinished basement. The builder, whom we purchased it from, put in an I beam in the basement so there are no beams coming down randomly for support. This was unique to the other homes we've looked at. We are going to finish it off and put a 5th bedroom and a 4th bath down there. I'm excited to have a master bath with a jacuzzi, which we don't have now and HUGE walk in closets! It has a place for Mark's office which we will wall off with french doors and it has a nice big kitchen! The backyard backs up to a commons area, so it will give the kids a place to play as they get older. We have definitely been blessed.
This was probably one of the hardest times that we have gone through with all of the stress and worry but God definitely provided. It's funny that we humans think something is so perfect for us (like we thought the first house was) but God has another plan! You'd think we'd learn that lesson after a while! He gave us an even better home that we will use to Glorify Him! I'm so thankful for the lessons learned through this process, most importantly the lessons of faith and prayer! God definitely knows what's best for us - we just need to trust Him!
Here's a picture of our new home... Except that it does have grass now :)
1 comment:
I am so excited for you all! What a great story...always neat to see how God brings us to what He has for us. We'll continue to pray for you guys as you make the move and get settled in...can't wait to come visit! :) HH (for all of the gang)
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