We Bought the House!

It’s the one I mentioned two weeks ago, a 4 bedroom, 3.5 bath single family house with finished basement in a gated community, a place we both like a lot.

There was a $55K difference between the listed price and the price we first offered. Based on the past sale prices of similar houses in that area, which also had some short sale and foreclosed houses the past few months since we started searching, we set our target at below $600K. A couple of rounds of negotiation later, we made our last offer last weekend at $$596K. The seller’s agent asked whether we were willing to go to $600K after sending our offer to the seller without a Yes or No answer. Our agent told them that we could symbolically add a couple of thousands more, but there was no way we can go over $600K, the price that the seller believed the house could sell. After two days, the seller informed us that they accepted our offer, with one condition that we take the house as-is. Since the house is only 9 years old and appears to be in a fairly good condition from our last visit, we agreed. We would be more concerned with the condition if it’s older. We will still do the house inspection, but unless that’s any major leaking or structural problem, the seller is not responsible to fix minor issues.

Now that we got the price we want, the next step is to get the loan application approved and close the purchase in one month. Actually, we already locked a 15-year mortgage rate at 4.25% yesterday. But since the appraisal has a 14 business day contingency, we will need to wait a little longer before knowing the result of our mortgage application. Hopefully, there will be no surprise.If everything goes well, we can move in early May.

Since our current lease expires in August, we will have to pay two months of penalty if we break the lease. It’s a lot of money, but I am still looking forward to getting out of here. The people upstairs drive me nuts every time they walk in the kitchen.