You can find Parts 1 & 2 here.
Let me start out this post by saying that if you've never bought a short sale or a foreclosure...it's a pain! It takes F.O.R.E.V.E.R! But with lots of patience and prayer, it can be very rewarding and we're so thankful that we chose to buy a short sale.
When we met up with our Realtor to put an offer on the house, we told him that we wanted to offer less than the asking price. The house was a short sale and was listed for $110,000. Our budget was $90,000. We had spent some time figuring out what our budget was and knew how much we could afford monthly for a house payment. We really did not want to go over the $90,000. Our Realtor said that because the house was a short sale, he wasn't sure if the bank would accept $20,000 less than the listed price since they were already taking a loss on the house. He said he would put in the offer at $90,000 and then have the house re-appraised to see if it would come down closer to our asking price.
After what felt like an eternity...we finally heard back from our Realtor and he had great news! The house was re-appraised and it came back at $82,000! Which meant that the bank could not accept our offer of $90,000 because it was too much. We had to change our offer to $82,000!!!! Nathan and I felt that this was a for sure sign from God that this house was meant for us.
After five ridiculously long months of phone calls, emails, and waiting for the bank to take care of things on their end...we closed on our house. We put the offer in on the house in July 2012 and closed in December 2012. It was really exciting when the key to our first house was placed in our hands. It was a new journey for Nathan and me and we couldn't wait to make the house our own.
We wanted to surprise Ruy so we told him we were going somewhere special. We put his jacket around his eyes so he couldn't see where we were going.
We took him out into the backyard and sat him on the playground. We said "Ok where are we?" He said "Chick-fil-a!" I had to laugh about it because that makes it kind of obvious where I go all the time :)
We took his jacket off his eyes and told him that this was our new house! He was very excited because he had really wanted to buy the house with the cool playground. Liam was too young to understand what was going on but we knew he would eventually love having a big yard with a playground.
It would have been so nice to be able to move in right away but the house needed a ton of work so in January 2013 my husband started the long, hard process of fixing our house.
...to be continued.
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