Accepted

Yesterday we accepted the counter offer to our counter offer. It feels good to know we have sold our house and we don't have to worry about it anymore. We still have an inspection and appraisal but it's pretty much done. We will stay in the house a little past our closing in anticipation of the new house closing. It will make the move easier and we'll only have to move once. We have been extremely blessed with the offer and have to praise God for taking care of this process and blessing us all these years with a great home.

As for the new house, the exterior will be completely closed in by tomorrow. The brick installation began Tuesday. It looks really nice and is so exciting. The dry wall installation has not begun yet even though the insulation was replaced earlier in the week. We're disappointed about that. But it will all work out according to His will. We needed to know about when the house would be done so we could figure out how long to lease our house back and our construction manager told us we should be able to move in January 15th. Roger and I both feel that may be wishful thinking and with the holidays coming up and construction crews heading home for the holidays that may be pushed back a week. But we'll keep wishing.

An Offer We Did Refuse

We got an offer on the house today! I got it in my email, which was new. I had a chance to look it over and gave Holly a call so that she could look at it too. I thought it might be a tad low so Holly and I had a conference call with our agent. First I needed her to explain exactly what the bottom line was. The buyer wanted us to pay all the closing costs and that irked me. But we then found out that the buyer was using an FHA loan and there are some closing cost items that they are not allowed to pay for. I asked our agent for her opinion and she suggested we counter offer by increasing their initial offer by the total of the closing cost. That would give us a higher profit that we believe is fair for our house.

Another issue is that they want to close on Dec 17. Our new house will probably not be ready until Mid-January. We asked if they would entertain a lease-back to us or push the closing date out. We also will use our appliances as a bargaining chip. We were going to sell our washer, dryer and refrigerator but will convey them if everything works out okay.

We hope to hear something back tomorrow! It’s very exciting to be getting somewhere on this sale. We just need to see how things progress. I think this is the buyers first home because I looked his name up in our county’s appraisal roll and didn’t see his name there. And I did another search and he’s either 29 or 30 and apparently single.

If he is not able to change the closing date or do a lease-back, some friends from church have offered us the upstairs of their new house. We’d have to move out of the our house, have everything put in storage and then have it all picked up from storage in Jan and moved in to the new place. But the Army is covering the cost of our move, so we really don’t mind which way it goes. But we really would rather move just once.

More tomorrow!

And yeah – this is Roger… I’m back on the blogging bandwagon again baby!

Rain, Rain Go Away

I had huge plans for today but the rain that started last night has messed up my whole day and there's a chance for rain until Friday so it might mess up my whole week. I had plans to prime and paint 1" x 4" trim for the exterior of our house today so it would be ready to put up this weekend. It's the last item we have left to get our house ready to put on the market. I was hoping to be done with everything by next week. Looks like that will be pushed back by a week. I wasn't even able to swim this morning. Every time I think it's cleared up and the sun has been out a while so I can try to do something outside, it comes pouring down again. I did everything I could inside early this week so I would have time to be outside the rest of the week to paint the trim. So I'm spending today finishing my niece's Halloween costume so I can get up there to have her try it on so I can hem the sleeves and bottom before putting on all the trim. She's going to be an angel. I don't know what Roger and I will be for Halloween yet. Our community group is having a neighborhood cul-de-sac party so it's outdoors and if it's still warm here, which it most likely will be, I'd prefer a costume that's cooler. We are meeting tonight to go over the details of the Halloween party so we'll have to go check out costumes very soon. Although the rain has altered my plans for today, I am glad we are getting some good rain. We really need it.