September 30 was supposed to be my last day at work. The other paralegal had returned to work on September 26. September 28 I got an email with some available homes. In that email was a property that had been put up that day and a link to these pictures — the San Tan Property:
M couldn’t get away from work but we both knew, after looking at other pictures of the house, that we needed to see this house in person. I contacted Realtor to confirm, if I could get out of work, could he get us in to see the house. I told him to line up some more houses, no matter what, that I was headed that way. I ended up extending my last day of work to October 4 so I could take another trip to Arizona.
The next day I drove to Arizona and got there around 4 p.m. I called Realtor before I checked into my hotel and was told that Seller had had so many phone calls about the property that they had raised the price $10,000 but would honor the original price for me since I had driven from California to see it. We had an appointment to view it for 6 that evening.
The owners were there and the wife gave me a tour. It was a beautiful home. They owned 2 other homes in Colorado and New Mexico, and she had just found out that morning that an MRI confirmed she needed knee replacement surgery very soon and she could not be going up and down stairs.
Yep, it was a 2-story home. 🙄 It was so hard for me to keep a straight face while looking at the home. Other than it being 2-story it was absolutely perfect. Since I knew there was so much interest in it I didn’t want the owner to know how interested I was for fear a bidding war was going to start.
The next day Realtor took me to see 6 more homes. One he hesitated showing me because by then he already knew our tastes and he knew this home was exactly what we had been looking for, but it had gone under contract that morning. He waited until I had walked in to tell me this though. The home was so gorgeous that I wanted to sit on the stairs and weep when I found out it was unattainable. But he was smart! There were other homes almost exactly like it still being built in the area so we went to a couple of the builders’ sites and talked to them.
One home tempted me so much that I almost made an offer. The only thing that stopped me was that we would have had to put the pool in ourselves and if our history is anything to go by – we would never have done it and I would have been ticked off for the next 30 years.
Finally we headed back to Realtor’s office and I put in an offer on 2 houses, including the San Tan Property — which we ended up buying.
The process of buying this house was not so much stressful as it was aggravating. Okay, it pissed me off! I have learned so much during the process. It’s really more than I want to get into because I don’t know if my blood pressure can handle reliving it, but it was very painful. No wonder so many people are having problems buying homes. On paper, we were perfect; however, dealing with the underwriter was awful. They ended up, on the last day of our contract, requiring a 2nd appraisal. It came in $9,000 lower than the first one so we were required to abide by it if we still wanted the house. All four of us (M and I, our Realtor, the owners, and their Realtor) had to compromise to make this sale happen.
The sellers were already out of the property. They knew that if the deal fell through that they’d have to go through the same thing with another buyer. The appraisals weren’t going to change. So they came down on their price. Their realtor gave up $1500 of her commission. Our realtor gave up $1200 of his commission. We offered $1000 more. We came out ahead in more ways than one. We got the house 😀
