House Hunting Victory?

Yesterday I mentioned that I had news on our house hunt. Well, I don't remember if I have already said anything or not. We found a home about a month ago on the internet. Not being in Utah right now we have been relying on my wonderful Mom and our real estate agent to go look at homes for us. They take tons of pictures and serious amounts of notes to give us the most information they can, since we are buying the home before we get to Utah so we are basically buying it sight unseen which is scary. So my mom -we trust her.. alot. A whole LOT! has been looking at these homes for us. Such is the reason for all the pictures and notes.

Anyhow, after finding out all the info we could on this certain home we asked our realtor Ann to make an appt. for her and my mom to go see the house. Tammy happened to still be in Utah at the time (it was the day before she came back to NM) so she went with them. They took about 40 pictures or so and then went home and uploaded the photos and notes to Facebook (our system for sharing house pictures because you can upload a lot all at once, and yes, my mom has a FB page, so does just about everyone else on all sides of our families, such a great way to stay in touch!). After looking at the photos and talking it over, and talking to Tammy to get her input, we decided we were interested. So the next day Tammy boarded a plane to come here and my mom and Ann went to go see the house again. This time they spent an hour or so there and took almost 80 additional photos as well as talked to the owner (which she had done the day before as well, she also met one of the neighbors who is really nice and happens to be the Mia Maid advisor at church and would be Tammy's teacher) and asked the owner more questions. She came home and uploaded the pictures and notes. After a couple of days or thinking about it, praying about it and talking it over we decided to put in an offer. That was on a Thursday. We gave them until Monday to accept, counter, or reject. Frankly we thought they were going to reject or counter. (home buying can be so frustrating!) On Sunday we got a call from Ann saying that the sellers had another offer as well and were asking each bidder to submit their best offer and then they would choose from there. We discussed it and decided that we didn't want to offer anymore. Our offer was a good, fair offer. So we resubmitted our original offer.

We gave the sellers until Monday at 8p.m. to respond. To our utter amazement we got a call at 7p.m. Monday to tell us our offer had been accepted. A week later we received the seller's disclousers telling us what they knew of about the house. They listed so much information. Pleased with the disclousers we moved on to the inspection. We were nervous about that. The home was built in the 1960's so it isn't a newer home (but not terribly old either) and you never know what could be wrong with a house even if it is a brand new house. The inspection came back with better results then we thought. There are a few things the inspector saw including that the basement stairs has no hand rail (the sellers will have to fix that before VA will approve the house for us to buy). Basically very little, simple fixes. So we were thrilled! After all, there is no such thing as a perfect house. I have seen brand new homes that don't fair well on an inspection, so we were thrilled that it didn't show anything major.

Our file is now at the underwritters. We have been approved for the loan with one exception. Jacob is officially done with Active Duty in November but is taking leave in September so we can move back home. He is starting his new job on September 15th. The underwritters don't want us to close until he has been in his new job for 30 days. Our loan officer has taken it to managment (leadership he calls them) to get an exception. 1. Jacob had worked for the company he will be working for before joining the Army and they held his position for him with all seniority and pay as if he had physically been there the entire 6 years. So it isn't a new job that he has never worked before and would possibly end up quitting or being fired from within a couple of months. Basically, it's a secure job that he has done before and so the mortgage guys will get their money. 2. Yes, he is going back to work on Sept. 15th, but he isn't technically out of the Army until Nov. He is taking paid leave from the Army for the 2 months before Nov. so we will have 2 months of overlapping pay. (the leave is the leave he accrued over the last little while that he never took because we wanted to be able to move home early, so we are taking it in Sept.) 3. With Jacob being military we are doing a VA loan, so they will get their money either way, because the VA secures the loan.
Our loan officer is sure we have a good case to get the exception. We hope so. If not and they won't let us close until October, hopefully the sellers will be o.k. with that, otherwise we have find a new house and we don't want to do that, did I mention house hunting is stressful! Our realtor seems to think the sellers would be fine with it. She talked to their agent and explained what was going on and he said they could give us extra time if we needed it because they know our situtation with the Army and the new job and all.

Wish us luck!