Bad. The Air Force giveth and the Air Force taketh away said leave and we have to streamline the trip and skip seeing some dear ones.
2. Saturday
Good. Leave town with current residence fully staged and ready to show to potential buyers in our absence.
Bad. Complete the staging and CLEANING so late in the evening, that we depart town at 8pm with a bag of fast food tacos and only get 4 hrs into the 16 hr trip before we stop for the night. Leaving a very long second travel day.
3. Sunday
Bad. Have church in the car, listening to old conferences and talk tapes. -it's just not the same with children in the back clamoring for snacks. We hate traveling on Sundays!
Good. Arrive at Grams, rest, sleep.
4. Monday
Good. Hang out with GrandMary, finalize the childcare arrangements.
Good. Grown-ups depart for final leg of trip to home buying destination city.
Good. Grown-ups arrive, settle in, have dinner with friends of friends.
5. Tuesday
Good. Meet fantastic realtor. Look at a million houses. 9:30am - 6pm
Bad. Most of the houses are very nice but new and boring. :)
6. Wednesday
Good. Look at a million more houses. 9:30am - 6pm
Bad. Have a hard time narrowing them down to one to bid on.
Location? Re-sale? Lot? Layout? Price?
7. Thursday
Good. Take a re-look at a few, decide and make an offer! Mission accomplished! Back to Grams.
Bad. On the drive back, we are notified that they rejected our offer and countered. We dont like their counter, and counter back.
8. Friday
Bad. While preparing to pack and hit the road, with hopes of adding back some of the family we skipped on our way up, we get the call that they didn't like our counter counter offer. And we don't like theirs either. What? Now what? We don't have a Plan B. (novices) What now?
Bad. Skip seeing the family we were hoping to see. Postpone leaving for home, (Which means traveling on another Sunday!) and go back up to see more houses!
Good. Gram was willing and able to keep the girls again for us.
Good. The realtor was able to move her schedule around show us a couple new ones, and re-look at an old one. We have two now that we like rather equally, and make a bid on one. (We have a Plan B house this time in case the first one falls through. We're happy. We feel like we're learning something.)
Good. Drive back to Grams. Again.
9. Saturday
Good. Depart for home at a reasonable hour.
Bad. Late in the afternoon, in the middle of a rather sparsely populated state, with intermittent cell phone coverage, we finally hear from our realtor. The house we made an offer on, is being handled by an executor and may take a while to reach and reply to our offer. The problem? -Plan B house is having an open house tomorrow and is highly likely to sell (price reduction) before we hear back on Plan A house. We could loose both. Ack!
Good. We make a decision to rescind the offer on Plan A house, (it hadn't even been presented to the executor yet) and make an offer on Plan B house.
Bad. PAPERWORK. We arrive at the hotel for the night with cranky hungry kids, and now we have to do a ton of paperwork to put in the new offer. -Print e-mail attachments, sign forms, fax them back. Now.
Good. We love having a laptop. Spoiled, I know. But Handy!
Bad. We get the forms ready and take them to the front desk of this tiny western non-town and the 17yr old behind the counter tells us that the fax machine is pretty unreliable. (I think she just didn't know how to work it.)
Worse. After trying to get the fax to go through for a good 15-20 min, we trade off childcare, and Dad goes across the street to a drugstore. No fax. Western Union? And I quote, "We're sorry sir, we closed 5 min ago." It is now 8:05 pm.
Good. I call the other hotel in town, explain the situation and ask if they might fax the forms for me. Hooray! Someone with an ounce of Southern Hospitality. Faxed offer received by realtor 8:17pm.
Better. The entire family is asleep by 8:45
Best. Realtor calls at 10pm to inform us that "our offer is accepted as written." We give a weak shout, and fall back into our pillows.
10. Sunday
Get home. Wonder about the drama of it all.
That's just he home buying portion of the adventure. We did have a great time seeing the family that we could. And the Girls had a GREAT time with all the family they got to visit.
Life is an adventure, and we love to tell stories, so it goes together pretty well I guess.
3 comments:
Ugh. That is definitely the hard way to do it! We've done it that way, too. good luck with your move!
Oh my lanterns girl!! What a story. So glad it ended happy with an offer accepted as written - yippee!! Can't wait for you to be a bit closer.
Hi! I wandered over here from Kathleen's site where I saw you'd left a comment. You've got a beautiful family, fantastic kids. I'm glad you're blogging.
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