Tuesday, March 15, 2016

The Craziest 48 Hours

This weekend we bought one house and sold another house. At some points we almost ended up without a house and at some points we could have ended up with three. I may have an ulcer and I'm sure my blood pressure was shot all weekend. I want to write this down more for me, but it's crazy enough to share.

Some back story: I mentioned awhile ago we were deciding whether to sell our home. After meeting with our realtor, deciding the value of our home, seeing the homes we could afford to move to, we decided it was time. While we wouldn't change our house, we dislike our location (and you know what they say). We started putting some work into our home, painting, a little updating, and some granite. All this time our realtor took us out to look at homes. He refused to put our house on the market if we didn't have three strong options we would be willing to put an offer in on if our house went under contract. He must have been worried we were going to move in with him if we ended up without a house.

On Thursday we did our final round of house hunting. Our close friends (my husband's best friends since elementary school, who happened to marry) mentioned a house in their neighborhood, across the street from them, was about to go on the market. This was the perfect neighborhood and perfect location. We weaseled our way into an early showing, hoping if we loved it we could get an offer in fast (other people knew it was going on the market and had already put in an offer before we saw it). The house was beautiful. It most definitely needed work and lots of it. But it really captured our attention. The yard wasn't quite what we wanted, but we were okay with moving forward with an offer once our house went on the market. Our friend even texted the home owner to let her know we were putting in an offer soon (during which they also delivered their second child, that's a real friend right there, worried about your house hunting while having a baby).

Then the weekend came and the craziest 48 hours began:

3pm Friday
Our house went on the market. Our realtor told us we priced our home at the high end of the range, but we were okay with that. We could reduce our price or we were okay staying put. We do love our home. Our third choice home also went under contract at this point.

4:15pm
Our showings started.

7:45pm
While sitting with a sick kid sitting in newly bought underwear in the car, we received our first offer, over asking.

8:15pm
Our showings ended, six total.

8:15am Saturday
Saturday our showings began. Luckily we had tball and it was a beautiful day.

9am
Our second choice house goes under contract. It had been on the market for 6 months. But God's timing is perfect.

3pm
At this point, we had had 24 showings in 24 hours and 9 offers, 5 over asking. We also had a kid get sick which required a paper towel wash down and clothing change in a park bathroom. Good times. Meanwhile, the home we put an offer on was making us jump through hoops. We had to prove multiple times we could handle both homes if ours didn't sell and even then they were making us wait. Our realtor was getting antsy and we were too. The same day this home went on the market another popped up right on the other side of the neighborhood. And it had a lot of promise (and a garage). Saturday night our realtor called and said we had a showing the next morning and he told all those offers on our house we'd make a decision Sunday afternoon.

10am Sunday 
We headed out to see this new home. The minute we walked in we knew it had to be ours. It just screamed sweet family home. It also screamed extremely old and out dated, but it was so easy to see past that.

10:10 am
After ten minutes in the home we were ready to put in an offer. Our realtor ran to the office typed up the offer, we signed and sent it off with our fingers crossed. If this home came back accepting our offer before the other home accepted then we could walk away without any money lost.

Then we waited. At the playground, at the baseball field, at Target, all because our house was still having showings. Our offers started racking up. At 12 offers our realtor started telling other realtors that if the offer wasn't over asking they shouldn't waste their time. He also said in his 15+ years he had never seen anything like this.

2pm 
We heard our offer had been verbally accepted but we needed to change the name on the offer because it was an estate sale. We took our other offer off the table and accepted an offer on our home.

6pm 
We were done. Contracts were signed. We did have to wait till Monday for them to be returned but to our realtor that was a formality that was happening (we may have worried just a little).

When I think about the weekend, I'm blown away. I'm looking forward to the month of reminiscing in our current house while anticipating the memories we will make in our new house.

5 comments :

  1. So happy for you
    www.rsrue.blogspot.com

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  2. WOW! Talk about everything falling into place and happening for a reason! Congratulations! Can't wait to see the new place!

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  3. Holy cow! What a whirlwind weekend! Congratulations, though! xo

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  4. This is so crazy! What a relief to hear your house was going for above asking price! And to find the exact home you wanted that same weekend! What area / neighborhood are y'all moving to?

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  5. playing a little catch up! how exciting! A new house- yay! And yes, it sounds like this was all just perfect! congrats!

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