HOUSE HUNTING HORRORS

I thought house hunting was supposed to be fun. I thought we would have options that we could choose from. I thought there would be something within our price range where we would like to live. I am not so gung-ho on finding a house after the past week of what can be summarized as a wasted week, full of super charged emotions. Last Sunday, Scott, Beckett, Monroe and myself jumped in the car and drove down to STL to look at houses. We had been reviewing listings and weeding ones that we were interested in out, needless to say we were optimistic when we had more than 20 perspective homes. Our realtor, Mandy Nickens (I mention her name because she is amazing and if anyone is in the STL market we highly recommend her), cleared her entire week so that she would be there for us. Monday we went and looked at 15 houses and 10 more on Tuesday. We decided that we had found 1 house that we would even be interested in...Hemingway. It was a beautiful brick/stone ranch on a cul-de-sac. The inside needed some updating but we were so excited about all of the possibilities.
So on Wednesday, we met with our lender and got everything started and pre-approved. Mandy called the agent on Hemingway and they had another couple who looked at the house that day and there was an appt for another showing on Thursday. Well, that was just enough pressure to make us act so we wrote up a contract (for what they were asking) and submitted it. WE WERE GIDDY. We had just taken a HUGE step and we were excited that we could be homeowners in a short amount of time. Around 10pm that night Mandy called and said that she had news (not good, not bad, just news) According to FHA policy the seller of the home has to have owned the home for at least 90 days before a contract is accepted. The home had been on the market for 45 days so we would have to wait another 45 days, the bad news is that if someone came thru with a conventional loan they could steal it from us...but that wasn't it, we could have lived with that, there was a twist...the people who were selling Hemingway hadn't closed on it yet, so they didn't technically own it. Yup that's right, they hadn't closed so we would have to wait 90 days after they closed before they could accept our offer. Mandy diligently talked to all parties involved and we worked out a deal that we would close with the original owner. Just so the next part is a little less confusing, there are 3 partners who play the part as "the middle man" Tim, Tim and Kim. The Tims are distinguished as good Tim and bad Tim. So the next day (Thursday) we get a call that there is another couple who had submitted a contract and bad Tim calls and is a HUGE jerk. The original owner is still living in the house and they want him out asap but they can't move him into the condo until we close on the property so they wanted to move the closing up from the end of May to April so we move it up a month, to April 21st. He calls back and says that he wants to know if we can do anything better. So he tells Mandy to have us resubmit our "best offer" on a new contract. Mandy called good Tim and he said that the price was not the problem and that it was really the closing date; so we agreed to close April 2nd (2.5 weeks from the day) and we kept the price where it was. Bad Tim called back and said "I thought we said that we were going to make our best offer" as if to say that that wasn't good enough and that we were just wasting his time. He then says that he doesn't want to pay closing costs and insists that if we want closing costs paid for then they would raise the price of the house 5K, so that we could essentially finance our closing costs. We didn't want to be bullied out of Hemingway so we agreed. It was so petty and it would only increase our monthly payment by 20 dollars. They accepted our offer, it was ours, contingent on our inspection, which occurred on Friday morning.
It was a good inspection considering that the house was 50+ years old, but there were a lot of little projects... and some bigger projects. Like grounding the electrical system, replacing the oven, fixing some of the plumbing, replacing all of the outlets throughout the entire house....Mandy was gracious enough to take us out on Monday to look at 7-8 more listings so that we could compare more houses to Hemingway. She also called in one of the electricians that she works with to get a bid on the house. After a lot of debating, analyzing, praying and asking for lots of advice we decided to withdraw from our contract in hopes of finding something a little newer, that would entail less maintenance.
After realizing that we may not come back down before we move there we decided to give in and look at apartments. We looked at some complexes but nobody wants to do short term leases...How frustrating. We left STL around 3:00 and headed home which got us home around 1:30 this morning.
At noon I got a call from Mandy and supposedly she talked to good Tim and Kim and they were really upset that bad Tim was such a jerk and they apologized and confronted bad Tim, which lead him to call Mandy and offer to drop the price to the original listing price...but in his jerky way insisted that we call him back within 30 minutes...We still passed.
You would think that this would be the end of the story, but really it is only the middle. Along with the counter offer on Hemingway Mandy sent us another listing. It is a house a little further out that is a brand new house, never lived in that is selling for less than Hemingway. SO we are heading out tomorrow, back to STL, to look yet again at several more houses that just came onto the market. ARE WE CRAZY? We just want a place to live!!!!!

TO BE CONTINUED...