finally an update

it's the end of an era. we are over short sale stories and starting a new chapter of our lives!

woo-hoo! so we are finally taking a leap of faith and moving on. i am well aware that i haven't written a post on here in almost a month (which is totally crazy, and ridiculous). i suppose that's just how i act when i'm bummed over something. we weren't moving forward, and i had nothing worthy of posting.

anyway, on tuesday we went to see two houses that we hadn't seen before, and surprisingly enough (especially to us) they were townhouses. the first one was kind of dumpy, and would've added 10-15 minutes to our daily drives. so, we went to see house number 2, and we were completely, utterly blown away. I mean beautiful, huge windows, 30 foot ceilings, nooks and crannies, a walk in closet!!! :o), seriously this place is amazing, and it is also much larger than the old one.

so, wednesday we decided to withdraw our offer on the other house (we were almost at the five months mark!) and put an offer on our newly found beauty.

so now we are waiting and wondering whether or not they will accept our offer. we think it's pretty solid, but you never know with these things.

i hope we hear soon so i can share the good news with ya'll and get started on a brand new dream!

You Are Here

Yes. We are Here, and while here is not a bad place to be, we are ready to be moving into our very own home. Shortly after we sent in our extension last week, we got a call from our realtor. She wanted to let us know that the banks have said that they are working on getting us an answer. Supposedly they sat down to look at it a few weeks ago, but they had lost a bunch of the paperwork. UGH!!! So, the sellers realtor sent everything back over, and we are hoping they will let us know sometime this week. We know we have been all talk so far when it comes to going out and looking at other homes, but we realistically need to close by the end of October to be able to complete the work that needs to be done before moving in. It's pretty hard to put a new roof on in the middle of winter, and that's one of our must do's before move in day.      So, if we make it to Friday with no word from them we will most likely be house hunting this coming weekend. I Hope we're almost there!!!

Update!!

warning: this post is a bit whiny, but it is also informative

after next weekend our updates may no longer be short sale stories. we are going to extend today for a week, but we are hoping to have a look at some homes this weekend. We have about seven houses on our list, and their locations vary by about 50 miles from Bethlehem to Emmaus to Carbon County. Ugh! I want to move now!
It is hard for me to know if I am being impatient or realistic. I don't know anyone who has bought a short sale before, and I don't know how long is normal to wait. I know what a google search says or what people I don't know say, but that's never as good as the words of wisdom from a good friend. One thing I know for sure, while we look through the hundreds of homes that come up in our searches, when I get to the special conditions the first thing I do if it says short sale is take it off the list. I am not willing to play the waiting game twice in a single house hunt. My heart can't take the anticipation!
So, maybe we will be in a whole new contract a week from now, scheduling an inspection, and getting everything together to close on a home. Or even better maybe we will finally hear from the banks and we won't have to start the search all over again!
we'll see

We were hoping to be able to share some good news by this point, though we are still at an unfortunate stand still. Apparently it is not a matter of whether or not the bank will accept our offer but of when they will get to our offer. We hit the 3 month mark on August 7th, and surprisingly I am dealing with all of it pretty well. We were planning on looking at some other potential properties last weekend, but I was with my grandfather helping him recover from surgery, this weekend we are dog/ house sitting for Mike's Mom, and the next couple weekends look as though they will be equally eventful. I am really in no hurry to find another place, but there have been moments when I've thought to myself that maybe this is all happening because there is a better house out there for our family. Who knows! I will continue to check the realtor's multi-list, until the day this deal goes through.

Hopefully it won't be to long until I'm showing this shot as our realtor rather than just a dream

So that's where we are, just trying to enjoy the final month of Summer, soaking up as much sun and fresh air as possible. What good has worrying ever done?

I apologize for my lack of posts recently, I had originally hoped that by this point we would be working on the final negotiations, or better yet getting started on all the projects we have planned for our future home, and honestly it has made it hard to post.

I am so excited for the day when I can do a before and after of our popcorn ceiling removal or refinishing our kitchen cabinets. We have so much planned for our little "castle" and hopefully it will be ours soon.

Thank You for your prayers, and we ask that you continue to pray as time goes on. We are handling it as best we can, but that is only by the grace of God, and certainly not on our own.

Patience is a Virtue (that I have certainly not mastered)

We put our offer in on the house on May 7th. UGH! That is 71 DAYS! just thinking about how long it's been makes me sick.  

Yep, we're still waiting, and our current extension of our offer is nearing it's end (July 21). So we are in the position, once again of having to decide what our next move will be. Our basic options are to extend the offer or give up and look for something else. Since we can't put an offer on another house while we're in this contract we will give them 7 day extensions at a time, and start looking at properties. We will continue giving them 7 days until they accept our offer, or until we find another house that we think is worth putting an offer on.

So, we are still in need of prayer as we continue to wait, and also start to look and see what else is out there. I have been mentally moved into this house since May 7th when we put the offer in, (if not sooner) and it has only gotten worse as time passes. We are still hoping for some good news very soon.

If we don't hear anything by the time we get home from vacation on Monday, we will have to schedule some showings and begin a new search. I hope with all my heart that we don't get to that point,but if we do, we do. I guess we'll see!

Update

So, tomorrow is the last day of our current contract, and what we decided to do is give them 15 more days to come to a decision. When we reach that point we will give them a week at a time and start to look at other houses. BOO! I am really hoping that we get some good news in the next 2 weeks and we don't have to get to the point of having to restart our search for a home.

Today I asked our realtor all the questions that I have been meaning to ask. What I learned was really quite interesting [at least to me.] The homeowner owes almost exactly what the house was listed for, but the reason it is a short sale is because of the realtor's fees. So, that was good news for us, that means that the amount the banks are losing is minimal and logic would make ya think that they are more likely to make a deal when they are only losing a small amount of money. I also learned that they requested some more financial information from the seller last Wednesday, her realtor returned it that night, but we are thinking because of the holiday they probably didn't even see the info until today.

PRAYER NEEDED!

We would really like to be home owners before the end of the summer!

This is what we want to see!

Still Waiting

So we are just rounding the corner on month 2 of our wait, if you remember this "it's been one month" post in which we were hoping it wouldn't get to the point of an "it's been two months" post. Unfortunately that is not the case. Our 15 day extension [60 days total] of our offer will be up on July 6th. BOO! We are planning on giving them some more time, but haven't decided how much, we are unsure whether we should give them 10, 15, or 20 days.
We have a few houses on our backup list, but they are not "our house" and unlike the house we are waiting on they don't meet all of our criteria. We are still pretty confident as far as our offer goes. We offered them asking price, and for the condition of the house the price is definitely fair. So keep on praying that the bank keeps working on it, and has some good news for us soon.
The current schedule had closing set for August 9th, and we would really like to be in the house before the end of August, needless to say we are starting to get a bit impatient and antsy. Hopefully we will have some good news in the very near future!

Moving Along

I have a bit of exciting news as far as our offer moving along with the bank. Our realtor called yesterday to let us know that the bank has asked the current owner for a hardship letter [which she has.] We met up with our lovely realtor this morning to sign the paperwork to push back our offer 15 days. So now they have until the 7th of July to approve our offer and closing is pushed back to August 9th. 

Her lender's also wanted to make sure that we are going to be able to afford the house, so we filled out this form which shows them that we do indeed have the almost 50%  down payment that was part of our offer.

We are hoping that all of this is a sign that our offer has finally made it to the top of the pile, and things will get moving soon. We are hoping to be able to move in by September, and there's a lot to be done between closing day and move-in day, so keep on praying that all goes well, and our road to home ownership starts getting a lot smoother.

We have been continuing to look at other properties just-in-case the whole thing falls through and we are left without a place to live, [SO Scary!] and thankfully we found something that is a good back-up, it's doesn't meet all of our criteria, but it's beautiful, and it comes pretty close.

 

Obviously this version of the picture leaves a little bit to be desired, but I did that out of respect for the homeowners. After all it is just our back up house.

Here are some of the pros and cons of this one!

PROS
all brick
ranch
perfect size
partially finished basement
needs updating
attached garage
CONS
not in a neighborhood (more traffic)
smallish garage

We haven't walked through this one yet, and I'm sure there would be a few more cons after doing that but overall it seems like a pretty safe back up!

Hopefully we will get some good news soon! Until then we're just gonna keep on keeping on!

playing outside

So! I have sadly missed one or two posts, but I promise that I am back in the saddle again! The one year anniversary of my Mama's death is tomorrow, and it has made for a pretty rough week. I do however have quite a few posts in my drafts that I am very excited to be sharing with you in the near future! In the meantime there's nothing like one of my scratchy little drawings that I love to color in using photoshop.

There is not an aerial shot available of our property. Apparently when the satellite for Google Maps was taking a picture of our house the leaves were still on the trees, because all you can see are the leaves.
Lucky You! I decided to draw one up myself to give you an idea of what we're working with in the great outdoors!
Here it is!

click on the photo to see the full size version of it

It's been One Month!

Ok, so today is the one month mark for when we put our offer in on the house, and I am hoping and praying that we do not need another post one month from now saying "it's been 2 months!". I guess that's what we signed up for. We were well aware of all that goes along with buying a short sale, and we still know that it could take a whole lot longer to be approved by the banks.
So, say a little prayer for us, and hope that we hear something very soon!
Thanks!
I will update you as soon as I hear something

*UPDATE!* there are two more weeks until our contract period of 45 days is up. We are planning on giving them some additional time, either 15 or 30 days, and we are hoping they will give us some kind of progress update when we do that. *