the real estate business

Before I start, Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I'm headed home today to spend 4 wonderful days with my family. Stay safe and don't eat too much.

We made an offer on the house in Bucklin. Kevin and I cussed and discussed at length about it and about another house we looked at that was a possibility. We went over all the pros and cons of each, we went over each of my reservations on the Bucklin house. I had some on the other house, I just didn't get as emotional about it, because to me, it wasn't a real contender. So, we agreed on a price to offer.

I called the realtor and told her what we wanted to offer...and I told her it was low, but I wanted to test the waters. Then, I got a shock, she wanted to put the offer in writing. What! Ok, this is a new one for me...anytime we've made an offer on a house, and any time an offers been made on our houses, we do lots of negotiating verbally and then, and only then do we issue contracts. So, on our house in Colby, we went back and forth 3 times before anything was ever put in writing! Here, all offers are in writing. Holy cow, what a waste of paper!

So, our realtor decided to call the sellers realtor and ask if this offer was even worth putting on paper. He said yes, so I had to do paperwork yesterday and, I had to come up with earnest money. Oh, we have the money, that wasn't an issue, but...well...you see, I'm here without a checkbook. I've been using our debit card for all my purchases. And, the amount of earnest money I needed was over my daily limit.

Fortunately, I got my first paycheck from the new job yesterday, so I thought I could just use it to open a local account and write a check for the earnest money. But, the bank I went to said they wouldn't have checks for me till today. And they wouldn't cash my check and just sell me a money order. So, I had to go to the bank where the college banks. They'd cash the check, but wouldn't sell me a money order. Yeah, didn't make sense to me either. So, I cashed the check, felt nervous about carrying around that much cash, and ran to Wally world to get a money order. Then back to the Realtors office.

We went over the contract, I signed it, got a copy for Kev to sign and then we'll fax it in to the sellers realtor tomorrow, or Friday, probably Friday. And, I'm sure they'll counter, and we'll probably counter again. But all will require more signatures and more paper. Sheesh. What a nightmare and waste.

We've been pre-approved for a considerable amount of money. I filled out two online loan applications, one for approximately the price of this house, and one for much more, trying to see what our price range was (since no one would tell me....) Anyway, once the bank saw the higher amount that was "pre-approved" by the system, their whole demeanor changed. I find that rather interesting, when we were applying for a modest loan, we were treated one way, but when we applied for a significantly higher amount, and then approved, well, we were treated with much more respect. Interesting. Very Interesting.