Let me start by saying we are incredibly excited about our new house, or rather the pile of cement and wood that will eventually be our house. However, how we got to where we are, and making one of the biggest purchases and decisions of our life was probably the worst possible way to go about it.
We were not planning on buying a house immediately. When we moved back to Charleston we thought about it, but we are first time home owners, and the thought of doing anything from a distance was rather terrifying. Instead, we decided we would rent for a year, passively look around (we knew the area we wanted), pay off debt, and save money.
We went ahead and got pre-approved just in case, and kept an eye out on listings. We loved Oak Terrace Preserve in North Charleston, but the first 2 phases were completely full, and the latter phase wasn't planned out yet. We heard some rough timelines, but again, we were in no rush, so we thought we'd just wait it out. Then came House #1.
What the hell, let's take a look, why not? Well "a quick look" turned into an offer. Whoops! The house was on the market for 2 days and there was already an offer on the table, so we opted to go for it, and as our realtor put it, "play the game". A few short hours later the seller asked for our final offer, which was pretty much our maximum, and we lost the game. Oh, well. Wasn't meant to be. We liked the the house, but it was the first house we saw... ever, and the fact we put an offer out there, as a eloquent colleague would say, "that's dumb". We were sad to lose it, yet relieved it fell through.
We learned some valuable lessons:
- the process of buying a house (about 10 minutes before we put in an offer our agent gave us a crash course)
- houses in park circle are flying off the market
- we raised our offer to our maximum pretty quick, and realized we didn't actually want to spend that much.
- we want to stick to our original plan: save money, buy house later.
Then came House #2, dun dun dunnnnn.
We helped some friends move and we're heading home to take showers when we saw an open house sign. "Why not?" we said (sound familiar?). 2 mimosas and a walk through later, we got back in the car and called our realtor to say we wanted to put in an offer. For those of you keeping count, this is 2 house viewings and 2 offers. This game, we won! On the same lines of houses-in-park-circle-are-flying-off-the-market, we ended up settling over asking price, but it was still waaayyyyyy less than what we'd offered for House #1.
It was smooth sailing after that (minus a little closing cost shock). We got our lender secured, the mortgage process was moving along quick, and we were initially approved for everything. Inspection didn't unearth anything that had us running for the hills, and the sellers agreed to fix everything they pointed out. Most excellent! We were breaking our lease, so our rental house where we are currently living went back up to rent, had a ton of viewings, the property management company approved an application and received a deposit. Last step: appraisal.
The appraisal on the house we were buying took half a month to actually make it to us (long story). Eventually, the appraisal came in, and came in very low, to the tune of $24k low. The appraisal didn't have any red flags on the house, but it did have some interesting comparison houses and their sales price, which was the large factor in what contributed to the value. Cue worry. Actually, I was blissfully ignorant until my husband pointed out that no rental house + potential of no home purchase = potentially no place to live in 30 DAYS for our two dogs and us. Forget worry, cue panic.
Our realtor got in touch with the sellers to say, "The house is worth this much, lets renegotiate" and the sellers, who are selling the house themselves, said "no way, Jose". They said they couldn't accept any less than the selling price (even though the selling was over asking, oddly enough) and claimed to have a cash buyer who doesn't care about the low appraisal value of the house, and in short, won't renegotiate. The purchase of the house was contingent on the appraisal, so basically, that's that. We wouldn't in a million years pay that much over appraised value, even if we could.
That panic I mentioned earlier? Was nothing compared to now. We have a house full of stuff, 2 people, 2 dogs, and no place to live in 30 days. We thought about renting , but we hated the thought of signing another lease, we hated the thought of living in a cramped apartment with our two (loud) hound dogs, and we hated giving up park circle. However, we equally hated the thought of being pressured into buying a house because we had to. We hated the thought of moving, but that ones a given. We asked our property company if we could stick around in our current house and cancel the whole breaking-our-lease thing and they politely laughed in our faces.
Our realtor was a champ, and we did a lot of worrying, a lot of trolling the Internet, and a lot of house viewings over the next few days. No, we did not put offers on all of them :)
Miraculously, we actually found TWO houses we fell in love with, which was a great spot to be in after the threat of homelessness. One was a 7 year old house in Oak Terrace, and the other was a new build off the duck pond. We wouldn't be able to move into either until October-ish, so it was a wash on homeless-front, but we were happy to have options we could afford in the area we love.
Without further ado, we went with... The new build! Behold, House #3, aka OUR HOUSE!
Ok, it ain't much right now, but it will be, and it will be glorious! We wouldn't recommend our house buying methodology to anyone, but hey, it worked for us! Also, we found a hole house to live in for 4 months while our house becomes more than floor.
More to come on why we think we made the right choice later.
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