Well, here we are in June and still have not found a home. If you happened to read this post, you'll recall that we put an offer on that home and promptly withdrew it due to a crazy owner, um, I mean, crazy complications. Fast forward about 3 months and that owner came back to us and offered for us to buy the home at his previous lower listing price. Maybe it was meant to be after all!
There was just one catch...the owner was not willing to budge on price if anything negative happened to come back on the inspection. So, we trudged forward assuming the seller was being completely honest with his disclosures and signed to purchase the home 'as is'.
During the inspection, the owner commandeered my husband the ENTIRE time...telling stories, giving advice, suggestions, or "recommendations" as he called them, how we were to run things in order for them to work properly, etc... Did I mention he was a little over the top?!? My husband was not able to walk around with the inspectors despite the many times I tried to pull him away.
My husband turned to me at one point and said, "I'm overwhelmed, I just want to leave".
I'm stubborn, so we trudged on.
At the end of the inspection, there were several small things and one somewhat large thing that caught our attention. Still, it was a decent price, so we pushed our hesitations aside and decided to move forward.
That night, things were finally quiet and calm enough and my husband and I started going over the events of the day. We went through the inspection report line by line and talked about all the little repairs we had to make, all the oddities of the home and the way certain things were "rigged" up by the owner, little things that worked during our last visit 3 months ago that didn't work this time around, and the big issue - LOTS of rotting areas under the eaves that had previously been painted over. So many questions and hesitations came to the forefront. We both got the impression the owner was struggling to keep his home afloat and we did not want to walk into the mess we were sure he'd leave behind another 2 months from now. Neither of us got a good nights sleep.
By the next morning, we both wanted out. We spoke with the loan officer and our realtor and put a hold on everything to really give us time to pray about buying this home. Thank God for those option days!
So, with 3 days left before we lost any earnest money, we signed off to end the deal. Neither of us felt complete peace because there was just so much uncertainty, but we BOTH felt like a huge weight had been lifted.
Not only did we say no to this house, we said no to looking to buy another home all-together...and for good this time.
We are done.
After tallying up all the repairs we'd have to make at that house, the few things we had to do on ours didn't seem so bad anymore. I have a new appreciation for my home and a new thankfulness for what I have.
God wanted us to stay right here...and I think I've known it all along...it just took me a little while to get there ;)
