Well my house buying cohorts, my husband and I learned a very valuable lesson this week ...
Never give up on a house that you like until it's an absolute done deal!!
So you've been out house hunting and you come across this pretty cool house. It seems to have everything you want, but something holds you back ... maybe it's one of the first houses you've looked at and want to see what else is out there, or maybe it's just a little out of our price range. So you keep looking. A few weeks go by and that house is still on your mind. You contact your realtor about setting up a second visit when low and behold someone's already put an offer on it and it's in attorney review.
Well that's what happened to us a few months ago. My husband and I had been going to open houses and made some appointments with listing agents to see some houses we found online back in November. When we had finally gotten our finances in order and picked a realtor we liked, we went out for the first time with her on Feb 2nd (I know that because I've kept a pretty detailed notebook with the dates of when we go out). It was house #4 of 5 we would see that day. The house was pretty great. It had everything we were looking for, the price was within our range, and we loved the neighborhood ... but it was still only the 4th house we had seen with our realtor and we wanted to see what else was out there. We had been to some pretty crappy houses before this one in previous outings and didn't want the first pretty awesome house we saw to sway us into a decision we weren't ready to make. So we moved on ...
13 houses later we were ready to go back for a 2nd look! My husband and I discussed things the night before - we would go out one more weekend and if we still hadn't seen anything we liked better then that first house we would ask our realtor to set up a 2nd visit. The next day the house was in attorney review. Needless to say we were crushed. When the tears started to come I knew I liked that house more then I was letting on. But what could we do; someone has beaten us to it. So I wiped my eyes and blew my nose and got back to the grind. I would still check on that house from time to time to see when it moved out of attorney review, and just to tourture myself, to see how much they got that house for.
We went out with our realtor two more times and saw 15 more houses. This past Sunday was a pretty disappointing house hunting day for us. We only got to see 4 houses with our realtor and 2 open houses that we drove past on our way home. I went to sleep that night feeling defeated and all day Monday I was in the worst mood. I made an appointment to see a house Monday night that for all intensive purposes was pretty awesome; the area wasn't as nice as that first house and it was on the pricier side of things but everything else was good. I just couldn't shake off my bad mood.
Tuesday morning I was feeling a little better about things. One of the new listings I had found the night before looked promising and I was trying to stay positive. As I was scrolling through the listings I passed by that first house. I clicked in to check the progress and ... what the?! ... the status was back to active!! ... no attorney review in sight!?!? I almost had a head attack and quickly called the listing agent (trying to stay as calm as possible) and asked about the listing. She said she had just re-listed it 3 hours ago!!! My stomach was doing flips. I thanked her and told her we would be in touched. I emailed our realtor freaking out! When she wrote back 15 minutes later she had already called the listing agent and set up a 2nd visit for Thursday (today) at 1pm.
She said that the previous buyers went into and out of attorney review and did their inspection. After they completed their inspection they walked away. Now any normal person at this time would probably be thinking that's not a good sign, but our realtor said the house does need updating (which we knew - kitchen applicances, etc.) and maybe as they were going through this process they found another house that they liked better and walked away at the first legal point they could. The listing agent said the buyers didn't offer them a copy of the inspection report, give any reason for walking away, or ask them to make any repairs before canceling their offer ... all of which lead her to believe that perhaps the buyers jumped the gun on the offer and found another house in the mean time.
So before I leave to go see this house for the 2nd time I wish this posting leaves you with some hope! If you have a house that you love that goes into attorney review before you get a chance to throw your hat into the ring don't give up! Leave it on your saved houses list and check up on it every now and then. You never know what might happen!
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