Surrey Lane is Under Contract

Last Friday was a good day and a bad day all rolled into one.

At 9 a.m. we received a very respectable offer on our house with a clean contract and a quick closing (before June 30th!).  It was more than we could ever hope for after being on the market for almost 5 months.  We quickly made an appointment with our agent to revisit the property that motivated us to put our house on the market in the first place.  We had a contingency offer on it through March, but unfortunately our house didn't sell in time and the contract expired without renewal. 


House For Sale

Then I drove past the house to "check it out" again, I was so sad to find a contractor's truck in the driveway.  He told me that the house went under contract two days ago!  We just couldn't believe it!  It was swooped up by another buyer in this unfortunate market.  What are the odds?!! 

I immediately called Bo to tell him not to e-mail our counter offer to the buyer's agent just yet because at the moment, we didn't have a house to move into.  He hurriedly said, "I'm glad you called when you did....my finger is on the send button!" 

Must Sell.  Lost job. Can't pay mortgage.  Wife left.  Took dog.  House a gem.  Except for asbestos.  Best offer.

We asked for an extension to our response to the buyer which left us with 24 hours to decide if we were going to
a) decline the offer on Surrey Lane so we could continue to live at home while we search for another house, or
b) counter the buyer's offer and find another house asap so we would have a place to live after our quick closing, or
c) counter the buyer's offer and rent for a while while we take our time searching for another place to live.

Option C would require us to pack up twice and not only find our dream home, but a temporary home as well to live in for an unspecified amount of time.  Sounds undesirable, right?  That's what we thought too.  But to us, it seemed like the right thing and the best choice for our family.

We spent a good portion of Saturday looking at houses.  I plan to blog about our experience and some of the houses we see house hunting, as well as what I learn from packing up 6 years of living in less than 30 days, so stay tuned.   Exciting stuff around the corner.

Today (Sunday) we got an e-mail from the buyer's agent saying that the buyers accepted our counter-offer.  We packed up the baby and headed to Bo's office to print out the contract, sign, and fax back to the agent.  (Thank you Jennifer for being our witness!).  Poor McCord, he's along for this entire house-selling/renting/buying adventure whether he likes it or not.  Here's a picture I took of him today hanging out in Bo's office at the bank while we finalized the contract.  Thank goodness he's easily entertained!

We are so thankful...
1- To be Under Contract (let's hope all goes well with the inspection!)
2-To be finished with showings.  When we first listed our house, McCord was 6 months old and had just learned how to sit up on his own.  Now he's crawling and getting. into. everything!  It's a much more challenging job to prepare our house for a showing with an almost 11 month old as opposed to a 6 month old. 
3-To find someone who loves our house and wants to live here.  But let's be honest here, Bo and I will probably both cry when we hand the keys over to the buyers. 

Are you still reading this?  Maybe you're wondering about McCord's maple....I have to admit as soon as we got the offer, I called the nursery right away to discuss the likelihood of it surviving transplantation during the summer (about 50%).  And of course now that we've decided to rent, we don't have a yard to plant it in regardless.  So, we've requested that the buyers allow us to remove the tree in the fall (restoring the yard of course) so we can move it to our new house.  They agreed.  They must be nice people.  I can't wait to meet them and welcome them to Surrey Lane.