Finally! After one year from leaving our home in Austin, last week we negotiated an offer from a potential buyer and we all accepted. That's right. Our house will be sold by March 8th if everything goes smoothly, which so far, according to our realtor, it is. I can't wait!! In the meantime, I've been looking at houses that are "supposed to be" within our price range. We hadn't been working with a real estate agent up here because I wanted to build a house, but our apartment contract will be up at the end of May and I don't think that will give us enough time.
Anyway, my "mistake" happened when I found an amazing foreclosed home that was a little outside of our price range, but could easily fit into it because it was a new home that was foreclosed by the bank since the builder claimed bankruptcy. I personally thought it was amazing. It was decked out to the nines and had to find someone who was going to show it to me. We are talking, granite counter tops in the kitchen and bathrooms, a fireplace in the study, backyard, and living room, a jetted tub in the master, a media room, game room, 4 bedrooms, 3 full baths, etc.
Before this find, Chris and I thought we might go with this new builder called Lionsgate Homes and had planned to meet them the afternoon we saw the foreclosure, but the real estate agent insisted we look at other homes with him. While we traveled with him and another builder, it was by coincidence that the Highland home builder just started talking about Lionsgate homes and how it brought down the value of the Sotherby homes (which is the one that filed bankruptcy and is the builder of our foreclosed house.) We did wonder then, but I think the foreclosure would have still been a good investment despite seeing the potential money we could make off of it, Chris didn't want it. Bah! He's so picky!!
Anyway, he showed us some other places - smaller and just as expensive. I don't mind them being smaller, but gosh, could they just be a little less!! Highland is a great builder, but they charge up the wazoo for any little upgrade! Finally, he took us to a Drees closeout model home that Chris and I have snaked around for a couple of months because we always thought it would be too expensive for us. Right then and there, I should have said, "No, let's leave now."...but couldn't. Damn. We walked into that house and it was like we knew we were home. He said he could knock off 54K for us because he knew this was way out of our range. It would still be too much because we would need to purchase some furniture and some other things to fill it up. He then said that it would be 19k less if we wanted to keep all the furniture (which is absurd because they probably made it for nothing, everything is used by strangers constantly viewing the home, and it's at least 6 years old since the house was built in 2005.) "No, we can't do that at all," I told him. So, he said we could probably negotiate some of the furniture. Okay, okay, now the deal is looking better.
We told him exactly what we wanted but we wanted to start the bid lower so we could negotiate. Well....he told the builder what we wanted which was his mistake. I said, "Look, we're already out of our price range and we can barely handle the offer you just gave him. If we put in an official offer, there will be no negotiating. As much as we LOVE the place we WILL walk away and its not because we are playing the game, it's because we NEED to in order to survive."
He understood and told this to the builder. They aren't sure if they can go this low, but they are going to present our offer to the president (since my real estate agent has connections.) WHOOP!! What we do have going for us is that the model home is over 5 years old, and the end of their fiscal year is March, which is coming up btw, and most likely might want to just get it off their inventory if they feel that it is costing them more to keep it. At the end of the day, the president of Drees is a business man and he will have to figure out what will make him more money - to keep it or to lose what would only be a couple thousand to a company giant like them.
No comments:
Post a Comment