Real Estate Trials, Part II

In less than a month after the For Sale sign went into the yard, our house has sold.

We received two offers over Memorial Day weekend. One from a very persistent real estate agent with clients who wanted us to pay their closing costs, buy a home warranty and give them our washer and dryer, lawn mower and curtains. We received another offer from someone who gave us full price for the house and wanted nothing more than a $400 home warranty. SOLD!

In the meantime, we also found a house we wanted (see photo above). It’s adorable from the outside but the interior needs some serious help. Turquoise carpet and stained vinyl in the kitchen are not very attractive–particularly when the carpet is patched with duct tape in one spot. The walls are painted hideous colors and whoever tried to paint got some of it on the ceiling. In the master bedroom, the owner must have been watching just a little too much HGTV and decided to try a sandstone effect on the walls. Lovely. It looks like someone dumped half of Folly Beach in a gallon of ugly battleship gray paint and went crazy.

BUT … the floor plan is terrific. It’s a spacious house with loads of potential. The backyard–which also needs a significant amount of work–is huge and perfect for our two dogs. Floor plans and lot sizes can’t be changed. Paint and flooring can.

Our initial offer (less than full price because of all the work needing done) was rejected. Our real estate agent went back to the owner the following week just to let him know we were still interested. We were able to come to a mutually agreeable price. I think we got a great deal. This house will be spectacular when we’re done and in a few years, we could sell it and make a decent profit.

Of course, there’s a snag. The owner of our new home in Mount Pleasant originally noted in the contract he would close July 19 but could close earlier with 21 days notice. At first that was fine because we hadn’t sold our house yet and wanted the extra time. Once we received a contract on our house we went back to him about closing earlier. The buyers of our house need to close June 30 and we have to be out at that time. Apparently he had lied about being able to close early. He then revealed he is getting married on June 24 and will be out of town for three weeks on a honeymoon.

We have offered $300 toward a storage facility (the guy’s ex-wife cleaned him out, so he barely has anything to move!) and we offered to close before the wedding but let him stay rent-free for a couple days after the wedding.

He won’t cooperate. So, it appears we will be homeless for two and half weeks. Not good. This means we will have to move our stuff to a storage facility and then move it to the new house. Moving once is bad enough – now we’re moving twice. Ugh.

So the real estate saga continues. Our hope is the owner of our new house will change his mind in the next day or two, but we’re not counting on it and have started thinking about arrangements for our period of homelessness. We do have a lot of cardboard boxes around the house these days, so I suppose that’s an option.

We’re actually thinking of driving to Arkansas to visit my in-laws for a week. When we return, we’ll have to find a hotel that allows pets. That’s tough to do, especially when you have 140 pounds of Labradors.

We’ll make it work … I’ll just keep thinking about how great our new house will be once we’ve moved in, renovated and settled …. Guess that will be sometime in December. Stay tuned.