Movin' on Up

Wellllll the verdict is in and.....our offer was APPROVED!!!!!!

There has been a lot of back and forth and I've basically been a constant bundle of nerves and nausea since we put our original offer in on Friday. It didn't go quite as smoothly as I had hoped and stupidly thought it would.

On Saturday we found out there was another offer made so our realtor recommended we try doing and "escalation" offer which basically says to the bank we are willing to pay X amount over your highest offer up to X amount. We went back and forth and talked to our mortgage lender about how high we could realistically go and went back with the offer.

Yesterday we found out that not only was there now a THIRD offer on the house but the bank wouldn't do the escalation offer. Which meant we had to go back with our best and final offer and if they accepted that's what we would pay regardless of what the other offers came in at. We also wouldn't know what the other offers were for. Talk about a blind gamble. We wanted the house and wanted to bid high enough to get it but not so high that we were over-paying for it.

Finally last night our realtor called and said the bank came back with a counter offer. Immediately I was like shit, we can't afford to go higher. Turns out the bank just wanted us to cover half of the closing costs (which we had already said we would do on our highest offer) and they came back down to our original offer which was significantly cheaper than the last one we had made. Basically they countered with a lower offer!!! We couldn't believe it! That never happens. The only thing we can think is that the bank knew the property wouldn't appraise for as much as we were willing to offer. Whatever the reason we were thrilled!

I got the forms with the final agreed upon offer today and a bunch of other forms to sign. So now we have to do the home inspection, the appraisal and make sure the loan I was pre-approved for goes through. Lots of steps still between now and getting the keys but if all goes well we'll be closing at the end of next month.

I'm still in shock. I truly didn't think we would find something so quick or that the whole process would be moving so fast. I'm still overwhelmed and nervous about all the money we will have to pay upfront but I'm also really really excited! Now we just pray the rest of the process goes smoothly and nothing goes wrong.