The wife and I have been shopping around for a couple weeks. We found a great home on the weekend with a HUGE (well, huge for here) lot overlooking a park in a semi-ritzy, new part of town. It has all the little things we’re looking for like a 6ft soaker tub in the ensuite, large kitchen and HUGE garage. The home is only 4 months old (the owner of the building company that built it is living in it right now) so it saves us GST and real-estate fees since we’re buying directly from them. Hence, we got a pretty good deal.
The catch?
There has been a conditional offer on it for the past couple of weeks. The other couple hasn’t sold their home yet (the condition) so the vendor has given them their 72hour notice either sell their home or lose their offer.
So, we are unsure as to whether they can pull off in 72hours what they couldn’t in two weeks, but you never know…
We’re kind of on needles until Friday AM (when the 72hours expire) to know if we get it or don’t.
Hey congratulations. We went through this experience last week and just did the final home inspection today.
Exciting and scary stuff.
BTW, the other people may be able to come up with the money even before they sell the house, something called Bridge Financing. I don’t know much about this.
Good luck! My wife and I were in the same boat a couple months ago - put down an offer, it was accepted, and THEN found out about a conditional offer already on the property. In the end, the first buyer was able to come up with the down payment 30 minutes before their contract expired - but it was all for the best, as the house we did end up with is nicer, bigger, and $7000 less.
At this time two years ago, we were coming down to the wire for buying our house. We were waiting for our final mortgage numbers, running back and forth with house and termite inspections, etc. etc. etc. It’s a numbing experience, expecially if this is your first house (as this was for us).
We found out after we moved in that there were 12 other families interested in the house. At least one of these families offered more than the asking price! For some reason, the owner picked us - maybe the kiddies somehow persuaded her to pick us.
We didn’t get it. The original offer came through at quite litterally almost the last minute
Oh well, I guess the brightside of it is that we are probably now just going to get one built for US. The good thing with that is that we can get it done exactly the way we want it.
The bad news is that we don’t get that sweeet lot that I liked so much. I’m almost a little depressed but I had a bit of a gut feeling all along.
Well almost 1 week later and we are out of the market.
<drumroll>
We just bought a brand new one! So new its not even finished yet! We move in March. It cost us more than we were planing <sigh> but not terribly much. It is however over 100 ft[sup]2[/sup] larger upstairs and that eats up most of the cost difference. The builder is an older gentleman from Poland that is a real stickler for quality and detail. Everyone that we have spoken to speaks very highly for his homes.
A nice thing about getting the one that since it isn’t finished yet is that we were able to customize many things… like the larger ensuite with a 6ft soaker tub, fireplace upstairs and down, opening up the stairwell downstairs to let the heat rise into the rest of the house, garage door opener and other goodies. As well, we get to watch them build it. I plan on taking pictures every weekend so we can see every stage.
Oh yeah! We also get to pick out the carpets, flooring, siding, tile etc. Mrs. Bernse is pretty happy about that.
I’m pretty happy. We got a good location right on the extreme edge of town. We look at farmers field/bush out of our bedroom and dining room window. For how much longer, who knows… the city is growing so fast.
Bernse-
I went through that whole bit a few months ago; lost a house
that I was SURE was the ONE. Month later I found a much
better house for the money. Other friends have had similar experiences too. Somehow, no matter how attached you were to the one that got away, you always end up happy to be where you…ended up.
Best of luck to you! Have fun fixing everything up!
I’ll find some webspace somewhere and post pics as they come along. The hard part is going to be waiting now. Although, we do have the added bonus that we have 3 months to sell our home which should be no problem.
Ginger, Spud The Barfing Cat[sup]TM[/sup] won’t ruin anything. He is pretty well trained to not barf on carpet. Although I just know he’s going to be curling up infront of that fireplace on a chilly evening.
Oh yeah! Almost forgot. 2 words - POOL TABLE! We are getting the basement 1/2 developed so its going to be a great big room on one half of the house. The front part will be den with the fireplace, and the back part is more than big enough for a 4x8 pool table and there will still be room for our fooze-ball table too.
