We still do not have a place of our own. This has been such a fun adventure. Let’s recap our journey:

We found a house that we liked in Stewart, Minnesota and called Roger the Realtor, who was the listing agent, to show it to us. We put an offer in on October 4, 2007. The house had gone through foreclosure, so we knew it might take some time. Our offer was contingent upon an inspection, so we had that done. It turned out that the log cabin home had a lot of wood rot in many of the logs. We dropped our offer $100,000 to make up for all of the repairs. The bank was not happy and kept waiting and waiting to answer us. Dave’s mom was not happy that it was so far away from the cities.

We decided to go ahead and put the Hopkins house up for sale because we knew we wouldn’t be able to pre-qualify for a new house if the old one wasn’t sold. We found a local realty company, Schatz Realty, that we liked. We didn’t want Roger to keep having to drive over an hour every time there was a showing or we would have gone with him. We signed the final house-selling paperwork on Wednesday. Mike Schatz told us that he was going to have an open house on Sunday. We scramble to get everything ready and left for 2 1/2 hours. He told us that there were two people who seemed interested in buying the house. A few days later, he called to tell us that we had a buyer. Sold in less than a week–smooth sailing! We were to close on January 7, 2008 which would be plenty of time to be settled in the new place.

By December, we decided we’d better look for a backup plan. We found the lovely Cambridge house and put in an offer on December 12. This house was going to be a short sale, so we knew we might be in for a wait as well, but supposedly the bank people were going to meet the following week, right before Christmas. Well, they didn’t meet. And they didn’t meet. And they didn’t meet. By the time they finally did meet, there were two other offers, one of which was about $12,000 more than ours. So we decided to look for Plan C.

Right at that time Jennifer sent me a link to her dream house in Orrock. The price on that one had just dropped. We went to look at it. We decided to put a bid on it on February 15, 2008. Now, here it is, March 1, and still no answer. Ugh!!! We think they may have decided because Dave got a mysterious phone call from our mortgage broker, but Roger and the listing agent know nothing about it. Maybe we will hear something on Monday.

We were going to look at another house, in Isanti, in case we needed a Plan D. Roger the Realtor called to tell us the house had been broken into, the wiring was stripped, all the plumbing was stolen, and there was a report that it was used as a meth lab. We decided not to even go that route!

So here we sit. Dave’s mother has been very kind and generous to let us stay with her, but I know she is more than ready for us to get comfortable in our own home. The kids are very well behaved, but they are kids–messy and noisy at times. I’m sure that it’s very difficult for an 86-year old woman to take in this many people for any length of time. Hopefully we’ll be gone soon!

Now, what is the moral of this story? There are plenty of good deals out there, but you have to be willing to wait. And wait. And wait. Will it be worth it? You will have to decide. In our case, the Orrock house originally listed for $349,000 and we should be able to get it for $232,900. Once we get through the impending recession and home values go back up, we should do okay.

The present owner bought the house about two years ago for $365,000 but has had trouble making his payments so the house has been on the market for about a year. I’m not sure if this is a short sale or a foreclosure. The house first listed for $474,000. They dropped the price to $358,000 and then to $299,000. I was on the internet and asked David if we could go see it. The price I found was $250,000 and it turns out that they just dropped the price $49,000 the day before I saw it. We knew that it wouldn’t last long at that price, so we offered full price at $250,000 and asked them to pay closing costs. Everything is subject to bank approval, so now we start the waiting game again. The bank committee is supposed to meet next Tuesday so hopefully we will get an answer then. We also asked Roger to pull our offer from the barn. We’re keeping our fingers crossed and our prayers raised on this one!

Technorati Tags: bank approval, barn, Cambridge, foreclosure, home, realtor, Rum River, short sale