Freakin' Short Sales

For those of you not in the know, Tom and I made an offer on a house about a month ago. It was a pretty good deal for the house. There were a few issues on the house, but things we were willing to overlook because overall the house was a good buy. Tom might have a different perspective on these things, but for me....here are my issues.

The look of the front of the house is not your normal look I would choose, plus the driveway is really short and the plot is a very strange shape. It's also built kind of on a slope, so the backyard is sloped down on part of it. The backyard is also not landscaped at all, so it will take a lot of work and sweat equity to make it into a workable space. Because the house is built on a slope, the back of the house is a long way from the yard. It has 3 different balconies, but no back entrance into the backyard. What this means is when Jake needs to go outside, at this moment, we would have to go out the front of the house and walk around to the backyard.

However, there are a lot of really good aspects to the house that I love. It is a split entry house, that is fairly new (built in 1995). The inside of the house is in really good condition. The kitchen (which has become kind of important to me) is pretty large and the kitchen, dining room, living room, and upper hall ways have wood floors. Plus there are a lot of open windows and good lighting & a gas fireplace. It has 3 bedrooms and an additional living room downstairs.

So, I like the inside of the house not so much the outside. However, with a lot of work it has potential. Here's the problem we're running into though, it's a short sale. For those of you that don't understand what I'm talking about, a short sale is a house that the owners can't pay the mortgage on and hasn't had any luck selling the house for the amount they owe the bank. So, the bank has agreed to accept less (or short) of what they owe. The problem with this for buyers is that your offer has to be approved by the owners (who get nothing from the sale so probably could care less) and any bank or banks that are owed money for the house.

When we were considering weather to make an offer we were told that the seller's agent said she had spoken to the bank and had a verbal agreement for the sale price. However, we knew from other stories we had heard that it was iffy. Turns out we were right. We put 30 days as the expected time to hear back from the bank. Our 30 days are up on Monday so we have little hope that we'll hear back on anything in that time. Last we heard it would be probably the beginning of Sept. Than another month or so to close. However, we have friends that are in the same boat and are still waiting to hear on their house that they were suppose to know about a month ago. I personally don't have a lot of faith in this process. The most annoying part is not having any idea when we'll know. It seems their process is to say we'll be getting an answer any day and then say the next thing the next day to string us along. ANNOYING!!!

So now we're thinking maybe we'll spend more money than we were originally thinking. This has been kind of difficult for us. Going from real estate prices in Utah and Idaho to here in Washington has been a bit of an eye opener. It takes some mind warping to not freak out at the higher prices. And now to go even higher than we were originally anticipated is even funner. The reason for this is the quality of the house. You go from a house you're so so about to houses that are actually in pretty good neighborhoods and are in good condition. It does bump up our monthly price by about $150 per month, but there is a part of me that thinks it might be worth it.

What do you think? Not that it will change my mind, but I'd like to know what you think!