Housing Drama

Back in September, Miles and I were searching for some homes on the MLS site. We saw this awesome home up for short sale for a great price. However, Miles found out it was already under contract. A couple weeks later, he discovered the deal had fallen through due to the buyers not getting approved for their loan. We went out to look at the house on my birthday. It is amazing.

Here are the stats:

5100 sq feet

3 floors

Main and second floor finished (3100 sq ft)

Basement with walk-out unfinished (2000 sq ft)

6 bedrooms, 3.5 baths

Very large master bedroom with *huge* walk-in closet, and large master bath

Granite counter-tops

Laundry room

2-car garage with lots of extra storage space

Cold storage in basement

Etc, etc, etc.

Here are some pictures.

I liked this shot with Owen running through the kitchen. I loved the dark wood flooring. Obviously the teal cabinet would need to be taken care of...
A view from further back. I really love the archways.
Facing the other way into the living room area. The door leads to a deck outside and view of the golf course.The spacious master bedroom with a door to the master bath.The super amazing, huge master closet. You can't really appreciate the size from this shot.

Pretty much it was an incredible price for the square footage and over all home package. We decided to put an offer in right away. Unfortunately, we got thrown into having a real estate agent pushed on us. We wanted to do it without one to save on closing costs, but they told us we "couldn't" do that and that the bank "would NOT" work with anyone who did not have an agent. So we went ahead and accepted an agent from the seller's agency. This agent of ours, however, failed to get our offer in quickly enough. Therefore, another offer came in just after ours and before either had been sent to the bank. They told us we should revise our offer to our "best and highest" offer and they would decide between the two. So we did. We went with asking price (knowing it had been pre-approved by the bank) with the sellers paying 6% closing costs. After some anxiety-ridden days, we found out they were taking our offer to the bank.

We figured everything would move fairly quickly since the bank had already approved a very similar offer before. Also, we thought they would be incentivized since we told them we could close before the end of the month (October). However, we didn't hear from them for quite a while and it wasn't until we were in the middle of our trip to London that we got the "your offer has been accepted" email. We were really happy and excited to move forward when we got home.

Once we were home, we proceeded with the home inspection. The results were pretty much what we expected. There was a *lot* of little things that needed to be taken care of, with the possibility of a few extras we weren't expecting that would cost a bit, but not too much. We were still pretty comfortable with the situation, and knew we would just need to put a little work and elbow grease into making our home functional and just the way we wanted. However, the inspector also noted some "sloping" in a few rooms in the house and specifically in the master bedroom. In his report, he merely said, "Have someone come look at it, if it bothers you."

Miles and I talked about it, and we wanted to make sure it wasn't anything concerning. We figured it was most likely just poor workmanship due to when the house was build (between 2005-2007 during the housing boom when anyone who could breathe and stand on two legs was hired as a construction worker). A man came out to take a look and after a bit, he discovered that where the floor was sloping in the master bedroom along one wall between the bedroom and bathroom and bedroom and closet, that it was a load-bearing wall for the outside wall to the second story. By doing some investigation downstairs in the basement, you could see that they had not built the proper supports for this wall from below, causing it to slowly slope downward by about an inch over the past five years.

Here is a picture showing where the top plate was missing going across the top. Instead there are some small pieces of plywood, which is not enough to support the upper 2/3 of the home.

We informed our agent and asked for an extension with the bank on our due diligence deadline. During that time (when our agent was worried that we might not go through with the offer) our agent went in to assess the problem and hired someone to "fix" it. He sent us some pictures showing where they were missing some of the supports in one area and had had them put in. In his mind, all was well.

This was his "fix."
However, Miles and I were feeling wary about moving forward not knowing if there were other structural concerns. Finally, Miles spoke with an engineer who stated he would only be able to sign off on the areas he could see (basically the unfinished basement) and if there were any other areas of concern, he would have to cut into the sheet rock to determine if the structure was sound. Obviously we couldn't go cutting into a home that was not ours, and we were not confident that the bank would work with us, as they had already said they would be unwilling to change anything about the offer and what they would put up from their side to fix these problems.

After a lot of talking and praying, we decided to bail at the last minute on the house and rescinded our offer. It was a really hard decision, but seemed like the most logical and wise choice to make. Honestly, the house might be just fine. However, we just didn't feel comfortable going in with concerns of structural problems that could cause major problems down the road.

It's been hard for me. At one point in all of this mess, I had already started packing, believing that everything would work out just fine and we were moving within the next couple weeks. I had to unpack those boxes and realize that my visions for *four times* as much space to work with were coming to a close. I definitely grew emotionally attached to the home and all the possibilities. It's also depressing looking at the housing market again because most homes just don't compare in price per sq ft and in how new and nice they are. However, I have to remind myself that we will find something better for us, without structural concerns, and that will be good for our family. I just have to be patient and our dream home will come along....