Offer number two

This morning our agent made our offer on the current house of interest.

The house was built in 2000, is a two story home with great curb appeal - even a waterfall in the front yard which AB will be solely responsible for maintaining and cleaning. It has a great kitchen and a large pantry. Under stair storage next to the kitchen which would likely be a kids' hideaway. The rest of the house, while quite functional, needs some updating. The paint is old, the carpets are old. The first floor has a great kitchen (that WAS recently updated), formal living room (office), formal dining room, dining area and family room. Two staircases that go upstairs to four bedrooms and a bonus room. Each bedroom has its own walk in closet and access to a bathroom - two of the bedrooms share a jack and jill bath. The Master suite is large with a big bathroom, two linen closets and a large walk in closet. The laundry room is upstairs as well. There is a three car garage and the lot is right at a quarter acre.

The house has everything we have lined out as wanting - with the potential for more. It is at an inexpensive price compared to what we have been looking at - which is a bonus. This is likely because the house does need a little work.

To this point we have taken our time with the house since it has been on the market for about a year and "no movement" in the last few months according to the listing agent when our agent inquired a week ago. We took our time with the offer and looked at a few more houses - rounding out our list so we could now say we saw everything in our price range. On Friday evening we told our agents we wanted to make an offer. Since it is owned by a company and she couldn't present the offer on a weekend, we elected to write up the offer on Sunday and have her present Monday.

We wrote the offer up and she phoned the listing agent to schedule the offer, whereby he said, "interesting, this house has suddenly moved up on the radar, it has suddenly seen lots of activity and at least one other offer this weekend".

Of course it has. Because in *this* housing market, you would expect people to be jumping on houses left and right, wouldn't you?? Of course another house that has been on the market for "going on a year" would suddenly get two offers in one weekend.

So here's the deal. Have a house that you are trying to sell that has been on the market for awhile? Let my husband and I take a crack at it. We will make the offer and you are guaranteed to have a run on the house. Just don't pick our offer okay, particularly if you live out of state. All this for a finders fee of say 1%?

Ok. All joking aside... we did end up verbally bumping up our offer after our agent probed the listing agent to find out that our offer was less than the other. She crossed out our offer and we added $15K to our offer over the phone. She said she felt pretty optimistic after the meeting this morning.

Is it a good sign that the mortgage company affiliated with the listing agent's company called AB today with an unsolicited "good faith estimate" on a new loan for our offer?

Tune in later for this story and more brought to you by the letter N and M and the number 8.