Hey Ranchers!
We know it has been a while since we updated you on our home-buying process, and that's because we were waiting for the sharp sting of disappointment to subside!
Here's the story...
As you know, we saw a number of houses on Saturday, November 27th, and we had a few favorites in mind going into our showing. Check out this post for a list of properties we saw that day. However, the houses we thought would be our top choices, the Old Farmhouse and the Desert Oasis (our pet-names for these properties), turned out to be complete duds in person!
Surprisingly, we fell in LOVE with this adorable, lakeside house that was not in our top three. We just loved the picturesque views of Lake Corpus Christi, the quiet street, the big oak tree in the front yard, the gardening shed, the well-crafted raised beds that would give us a jump-start on building Ortolana Ranch, and the quaint guest house. The vibe, the energy, the Zen quality of it all...we just LOVED it!
So, we put in an offer!
The real estate game is a bit like poker, so here's some context to get a better sense of how we played this. The house had been on the market for 91-days at the time of our showing and there had been zero movement on it. Additionally, the asking price had been lowered twice in the same month. We thought, the sellers are getting a bit anxious here...they're eager to get this sold. We decided to offer $285,000, which was $20,000 below the asking price; we thought offering a little more than 7% below asking was a great place to start negotiations.
Shortly after we made our offer, we got a call from our real estate agent. The listing agent had called and let him know another offer would be coming in (no specifics on the amount) and we may want to consider upping our offer. How strange, we thought, that we would be asked to up our offer before the sellers even had the chance to see it! That seemed a lot like negotiating with ourselves! Never a good idea. We held at our original offer, hoping the sellers might counter.
Unfortunately, that's not how it played out.
The other offer was a CASH offer, which are often less risky than financed offers, which ours would be. Even though we are planning to borrow FAR less than what we have been pre-approved for, and each have amazing credit, it's difficult to compete with cold, hard cash. Not surprisingly, the sellers accepted the cash offer.
We've been smug and heartbroken about it since.
This was our first experience with the sometimes disappointing nature of the home-buying process, and I have to tell you, we don't like it.
Home hunting is now on pause until after the holidays. We have our apartment in Corpus Christi until August, so we have plenty of time to find the perfect place, but now they will all be measured against this home we missed out on.
We have faith that something will measure up!
More to come as we continue house hunting in the Spring.