Strike Two (or, A Bizarre Tale)

another photo of a house we won't be living in...

All right, everyone, I have a funny story to tell you (if I can keep it from being confusing). On Thursday the above house went on the market (while Vance was in Colorado for the week). I saw it on Friday with the kids. I liked it--didn't love it like the other one--but it was a good house that met our list. Big yard, great climbing trees, open layout, new kitchen with granite countertops. It showed great, and I knew it wasn't likely to make it to the weekend without an offer. Vance was supposed to fly in Saturday, so we planned to look at it on Sunday before lunch. His flight was delayed, so we didn't see it until Sunday evening. He really liked the house.

But, as I suspected, there was another offer on the table. The sellers were waiting, however, for our offer, since we had told them we were serious. Our realtor said, "you need to give them your highest and best offer." We had learned our lesson from last time, so we agreed. It was hard to come up with a number, because I was still uneasy about the comps. It's pretty much one of the nicest houses in the neighborhood, and I was concerned about pricing ourselves out of the neighborhood. Ultimately, however, we gave them an offer slightly above their asking price. Deadline: today at noon.

So when my realtor calls me today, she gives me the crazy scoop. There were 3 showings on the house, and 3 offers. The first offer was about $12,000 lower than ours, and they wanted their closing costs covered as well. They were apparently concerned about the appraisal as well, so they put a big paragraph about being able to get out if it didn't appraise. The second offer had a similar clause. So did ours.

Apparently, this freaked out the owners so much that, afraid of the house not appraising at the list value, they took the lower offer. How crazy is that?!

I had to laugh. The first time we had an accepted offer which was unethically dumped. This second time we offered a bid too high for the seller's taste. Third time's the charm, right?

This time has been a lot easier than the first...I wasn't as attatched to the house, and it was so ludicrous that I couldn't really take it hard. Obviously, God has something else in mind. And I think it has something to do with us not worshipping the house we'd like to live in :)