We Sold Our House!
That’s the good news 
. The bad news is the final price, after all the costs and cashback (no including the upgrade we did), is likely to be lower than the price we paid 5 years ago when we bought the house 
. But in this environment, we are still happy that we got an offer before moving.
Thursday eventing, our agent told us that the buyer, who has already come to see the house twice, has made an offer to buy our house for $238K with up to $13K seller’s concession. The offer wasn’t very impressive because that not only the price is quite low, but also the buyer’s financial situation isn’t very solid. Of the couple who makes the offer, the husband is still in the graduate school, so he doesn’t have any income. Only the wife is listed as buyer, but she is now only working in a hospital as an intern (a physician in the future). The buyer plans to put down nearly $8,000 as deposit, but no other down-payment at closing. All the reset will come from loan and they will apply for a FHA loan. We have no idea how much an intern in a hospital makes every month, but the buyer did provide a pre-approval letter for the amount of $250K loan from an institution that I have never heard of together with the offer (I did Googled it and it seems legit).
We discussed the offer with our agent yesterday. Though he also isn’t very confident, he said we can make a counter offer to see if they are still interested in further negotiation. So we lowered the price by $5,000. The buyer almost immediately responded with an increased price, which is a good sign. Then today after one more round of back and forth, we reached an agreement with the buyer: $247K as the sale price with $9,500 cashback and the buyer will put down $9,100. The closing date is one month from now and the total commission is 5%.
After having the house on the market for more than 2 months and having to reduce the list price by $10K, this offer of course isn’t the one that gets us excited. But we will take what we can get at this moment. If the sale can go through, it will save us a lot of trouble because we really don’t want to rent the house out, then one year later go through the same process again. Plus, having the money in our hands will give us the flexibility we need when looking for a permanent place next spring.
Now we still need to keep our fingers crossed and hope the buyer get the mortgage.
BTW, here are some weekend readings:
- The Myth of Stable Employment
- Use Low Interest Rate Credit Cards To Lower Your Debt
- The Value of Establishing a Permanent Residence
- How to Qualify for Social Security Disability Benefits – Eligibility Requirements
- 7 Frugal Vacation Ideas in Newport, Rhode Island
- How to Save Money on Travel
- 7 Ways to Save Money on Back to School Shopping
- 5 Tips to Avoid Overdraft Fees
photo credit: Azhure*
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If you had been renting instead of owning your home, then where would you be? Much worse? Much better? Or, just the same. And, that’s after factoring in all selling costs, living costs, and initial closing costs… such as homeowner insurance, taxes, maintenance, condo/hoa, any interior renovations or fixings, water, landscaping, bigger space utilities bill, home inspection, radon testing, lawyer legal fees, loan applications, any points on mortgage, other lendor fees such as credit report, appraisal, title and lien search, state recording, survey fee; plus your benefits of itemizing mortgage interest and property taxes.