And on the Eighth Offer, We Got a House

by Garli

In October 2012, my husband and I had established careers in our town, a down payment saved, and a big student loan and a truck paid off. We were ready to buy a house, and our lease was up, so we packed up our stuff and moved into a small apartment that came with a six-month lease that turned month-to-month.

Both of my parents are real estate agents, but I knew I needed an agent in town. My husband and I have a handful of friends who are agents as well, but I wanted to work with a stranger because of all the personal information that would be involved, and because a really honest part of my brain knew that I was going to freak out at least once or twice. We found our agent by visiting open houses, and chose someone I didn’t get a slimy vibe from. When it came to choosing a loan officer, I went in the opposite direction and went with a family friend I’ve known forever.

Throughout the process we went to probably five times more properties than we ended up bidding on. Not all of the properties were in the price range we were looking in, but I really wanted to get a sense of the market for myself.

I had a few things I considered must haves from the very beginning: I wanted a single-story house. I wanted at least 1.5 bathrooms. I needed a gas stove. I strongly preferred to not have a stucco exterior. My husband wanted a garage. Neither of us wanted a condo. We both ended up with two of the things we wanted.

Our first offers were ones that never even got submitted. Lesson learned: Have all of your papers handy for bank-owned properties. I had a pre-approval and thought I was sitting pretty. Nope — when stuff is bank-owned the procedure is to send your papers directly to that bank for pre-approval. Since we had recently moved and never really unpacked some of our boxes, we were unable to participate in the bidding for either of these properties. We had the papers written up to submit our bids, but by the time we found our tax returns from two years ago the properties were in escrow.

Offer 1: 3 beds, 2 baths, 1,483 square feet

Asking price: $680,000. Our offer: $680,000. Closed escrow in February for $723,000. Current zestimate®: $1,037,715

The house was on a busy street in my dream neighborhood with ocean views if you stood on your tiptoes. Fireplace, mid-’80s looking kitchen. The third bedroom had a separate entrance with a bathroom so it would be easy to rent out if you wanted that. There were mature dwarf citrus trees in the backyard. The asking price was about $30K more than I was comfortable with, but my husband wanted to make an offer anyway. It was sold to all cash buyers.

Offer 2: 3 beds, 1 bath, 880 square feet

Asking price: $603,000. Our offer: $603,000. Closed escrow in March for $605,000. Current zestimate®: $786,424

This place was tiny and totally decrepit. The backyard looked like a nice place to get lyme disease. The detached studio had been kept in much better condition, which was probably because it was used for extra income. There was a sweet deck and I wanted to live there even though my husband was not excited for the amount of work necessary to update it.

Offer 3: The (first) house I didn’t really want. 3 beds, 1.5 baths, 1,092 square feet

Asking price: $625,000. Our offer: $610,000. Closed escrow in Febuary for $605,000. Current zestimate®: $714,331

This house looked like it had recently been flipped. Everything was nice in a really superficial and boring way. We had looked at a handful of houses that were in escrow 48 hours after being on the MLS so we just took a breath and submitted an offer. We got to the point where we were on round five of offer/counter offer and I wanted out. I really hated the way-too-yellow exterior. I hated the kitchen — the stove was gas, but next to the wall. The thought of cramped cooking drove me crazy. Moving it over a few feet would have meant throwing out the granite counter tops, which would have meant pulling out all of the new cabinets and my brain spiraled it into something more than it was. I didn’t want to live there. (Hello, emotional response.) At the time I’m sure my husband had murder feelings, but he’s since mentioned that he’s much happier where we ended up.

Offer 4: The sellers were fighting. 2 beds, 1 bath, 756 square feet

Asking price: Don’t recall! Our offer: still drawing a blank. Closed escrow in May for $565,000. Current zestimate®: $596,307

I don’t remember a lot of details about this one. We got our offer in five hours after it became a public listing. Initially we got a verbal acceptance to stand by for a counter offer, but then it didn’t come. Our agent told us the sellers were in the middle of a divorce and couldn’t agree on their end of things, and weeks later they accepted a different offer. I felt irrationally relieved that we weren’t moving into a house where people just got divorced. Clearly that’s contagious, so we dodged a bullet there.

Offer 5: Scared off by the home inspection. 2 beds, 1.75 baths, 1,056 square feet

Listed at $615,000. Our offer: $615,000. Closed escrow in May $615,000. Current zestimate®: $699,785

This one was a bank approved short sale. The sellers bought at the height of the last real estate bubble for over $900K. The outside was so, so pretty. The yard was big and perfect. The inside was a weird layout with weird colors and it was kind of dark. I had sworn off short sales due to all of the red tape attached, but since it was already bank approved we went for it. There were three offers for the same price, so the seller provided a recent home inspection for all of us. The plumbing and roof needed immediate attention, and there was extensive termite damage. The sellers wanted to sell “as is”, so we backed out. The buyers with all cash bought it, which makes sense; I can’t imagine a lender okaying those terms.

Offer 6: The second house I really didn’t want. 2 beds, 3 baths, 1,221 square feet

Asking price: $525,000. Our offer: $550,000. Closed escrow in April for $567,000. Current zestimate®: $625,494

This was a detached condo with two stories, no yard, but a tiny deck. Low association fees. Extremely nice interior, cute exterior. I hated it, my husband loved it. I could tell that it was going to go for way over asking. I agreed to make an offer, but I knew we’d be out bid. I am so happy to not be in a two-story house.

Offer 7: Frankenhouse. 2 beds, 1 bath, 854 square feet

Asking price: $579,000. Our offer: $600,000. Closed escrow in April for $680,000. Current zestimate®: $718,305

The house was bank owned. It had a great location next to one of the nicest parks in town, and a huge backyard. It also had a wood panel back and a stucco front. The floor changed from wood to fake wood laminate in the middle of the living room, and although it was close, it didn’t match and I couldn’t stop staring at it. We made an offer, but yet again lost out to all-cash buyers. This was the first time I was shocked at the price it went for.

Around this time we were starting to feel desperate. Months earlier my mother had mentioned that we should work with our agent and send letters to the owners of homes not yet on the market expressing our interest in their properties. I ignored her because I really didn’t like the idea. In a span of a few months the overbids by all cash buyers seemed to be steadily creeping up. The height of First World Problems is when you have what feels like an obscene amount of money and no one will take it from you for what you want.

Our agent brought up the idea of the letter. My husband was totally against it. I told him my mom had brought it up months ago and we weren’t getting anywhere going the other route. Let me tell you now that both my husband and I still consider its contents to be mortifying. There’s a picture of the two of us hugging on a beach in front of a sunset so pretty it looks fake. There’s some nauseating text about how we’re just so excited to be building a life together and how much we’d love to do it in your beautiful property. There’s something about how he grew up in town and loves it here. There’s a strong possibility most of our neighbors have read it and laugh at us. It doesn’t really matter because it worked.

Offer 8: Our house. 3 beds (kinda), 1 bath, 1,012 square feet.

Cons: one small bathroom, electric stove, stucco exterior.

Pros: One story, big garage, kitchen has a gas line, single family home and no one can outbid us.

Asking price: Not on the market. Our offer: $625,000. Zestimate at the time: $599,00. Appraised at $635,000. Closed escrow in June for $625,000. Current zestimate: $709,675.

We thought making offers on a house was stressful, but we unlocked a new level of stress when we put down the first part of the down payment and opened escrow. We were first-time buyers so the deposit was the biggest check we’d ever written. Luckily I knew the drill in terms of the scrutiny that we opened our finances to — the kinds of things typically revealed in home inspections and endless piles of paper to wade through so that when I had freakouts I could rationally get my brain out of panic mode.

Some highlights were the extent of the termite damage to the main house: the bathroom ended up needing to be fully redone. There was a super creepy death trap playhouse in the backyard that was held together with black mold and termites which had to be completely demolished before the bank would fund the loan.

We also had a trip to Mexico the week the contingencies were supposed to be removed. The timing on this one matters because if that gets pushed back, the closing date of our escrow could have gotten pushed back, which meant we could have lost the rate we had locked in for our mortgage. We ended up changing our plans and leaving the small island we were on because there was no internet cafe with a working scanner. (Also, the fun of convincing ourselves that scanning documents with financial information in a foreign country was a smart idea.) We lost an extra day because of a $900 cash deposit into my bank account three months prior; it made the bank nervous that I didn’t have a paper trail for it. Luckily that amount wasn’t critical to the loan going through so they overlooked it.

The real terror started the day the contingencies were removed. We could no longer get our deposit back. We put in 30 days notice at our apartment. I kept thinking that if I lost my job or did something stupid I could lose my entire life savings in foreclosure. There were of course, further delays (there always is). In the end we had to move out of our apartment and live in a tent in the back yard for 3 days while the floors were redone.

Our agent sends us emails whenever houses in our neighborhood sell, and when either of my parents visit they always talk about comps, or how much our house has appreciated (13% in 18 months), but I like our house a lot and am nowhere near ready to repeat this process.

This story is part of our Real Estate Month series.

Garli lives in Santa Barbara, is a contact sports junkie and a slave to her puppy.

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