Happy Fourth of July weekend! We got to spend time friends, eat a lot of good food, do a little shopping over the weekend, and next weekend we are heading to the lake for some birthday fun and I can't wait! 

Well, I've left you guys hanging for a week as we also waited to find out if the investor would back out of this house contract or not! (Read the full story about our house offer here)

We have been praying all week about this house, but also tried to be cool about it and not spend too much time thinking about it...

We finally got word that HE BACKED OUT at the last minute, which means that OUR OFFER WAS ACCEPTED! 

We were so excited and began working right away to get our inspection scheduled, and finalize mortgage information, etc.

We knew that the house itself was "move-in ready" but the property needed a lot of work, so we wanted to have quotes for the work to make sure we were up for the challenge. We went to the property for the inspection and were surprised to hear from our inspector that the property *was not* move-in ready, but actually needed quite a bit of work done...new HVAC, new water heater, new roof, and reworking some of the plumbing and electrical that wasn't done properly, etc. We were shocked that the list was so long! 

So that meant that we needed to get the whole crew out to the house...yes, we had to order additional inspections from an electrician, plumber, HVAC, roofer, and a structural engineer, because of the work that was needed outside of the house. So our $500 option fee turned into $1500 in inspection costs! 

Meanwhile, I looked out the window while we were talking with the inspector and noticed....NEW FENCE POSTS in the ground! 

Yes, our potential new neighbor had gone rogue and started building a new fence next to her old fence...no big deal except that the new fence was 2 feet further into our property! WHAT?! Hold everything. I have serious PTSD from our last round of fence drama, so I wanted to deal with this immediately and get her to stop building until we had a new property survey. Why was she building a new fence on our property while the house is still on the market?! Adam and I were both concerned about buying the house then being left to deal with the fence drama as opposed to the current owner needing to take care of it now before it was fully built! 

The selling realtor assured us that it would be fine (of course she would say that!) so we moved forward with the additional inspections, and continued in our option period.

A couple days later we start getting reports back from the specialist inspectors and WOW. There was so much work that needed to be done on the property...just to make it SAFE! We already planned on doing a major renovation to the front yard/driveway to make it usable, but hearing about tens of thousands of dollars of repairs that were needed inside the house too made us start to question if this property was really worth what we were paying and worth it to us!

We unfortunately had a negative experience with the selling realtor and/or seller (not 100% sure)...she told us that there was a structural engineer who had already been to the property and confirmed that it was fine and only cosmetic things needed to be updated. When we asked for the report, however, it turns out that there had NOT been a structural engineer inspection done by them, but instead someone gave them a quote on what it would cost to fix things. UM that's very different! Remember from my original post that she led us to believe there was another offer in when there wasn't!?

All in all, we finally realized that the move-in ready house we thought we were getting and had put in an offer on was NOT that house at all.

We decided that it wouldn't be wise for us to move forward with this property, so we worked with our amazing realtor to terminate our contract before our option period ended.

BUT WAIT. After we sent off the termination document, our realtor had to text us and let us know that she heard from the seller. They wanted to know if a "seller credit" would make a difference. Ha! At that point, no it wouldn't. It felt like they had tried to trick us and pull a fast one, relying on "the market" to drive up the price of the home, then sell it for a great profit even though it needed a lot more work that they let on! Who knows, maybe that's not the case at all, but it was enough of a feeling to make us back out.

I don't think it's asking too much to want to do business with someone who will be upfront with us about the property and the work that needs to go into it.

So our contract has officially been terminated and I'm back on my Zillow game! ;) 

I have chosen not to share photos or detailed information about the home because I am writing openly about our experience. These are my opinions and the events that I experienced during this process, so i'm sharing them. So much of the home buying process is kept secretive and shrouded in lingo, and I'm not here for it. So I'm hoping to illuminate some things to look for during your home buying process. I'm so thankful for our amazing realtor who has our best interests in mind. My best advice for you is to work with a realtor that you trust personally and who runs their business with integrity.

‍