Against all Odds: Purchasing a new home.

Where to begin? A lot has happened over the course of two months and we are becoming increasingly discouraged with the house hunting and closing process.

To begin with, we went on a trip to hunt for new home to purchase and found several that we liked. The first house was in foreclosure and you had to place a bid for it online. We called the auction company and were told that we had 4 days to make a bid and they post the current highest bid. We talked about it overnight and woke up ready to purchase a house. We went online and the house had a huge SOLD sign posted across the ad. We called the auction company and they informed us that the "Asset Manager" had accept the last bid and the house was taken off the market.

The second house we looked at was being listed by a very lazy Real Estate agent, and in my honest opinion unprofessional. She sent us out on our own after she: 1) Lost her car keys. 2) Didn't have a current license tag for her car.  3) Had a lot of work to do in her office. 4) Needed to spend some time with her dogs because she had been working to much recently. No shit we got all of these excuses in one day. So we spent the next 5 days looking at houses ourselves calling this lazy ass to get combination numbers to go in and look at different houses. The house we liked we found out was not available even though it had a For Sale sign in the yard. The listing agent, see the same above lazy ass, said that the house had to go through a series of inspections and paperwork needed to be filled out to get a selling package from HUD, before it could be sold. Come to find out she was right. We were amazed at the amount of time it takes for foreclosed homes to be put on the market for resale.

We were also surprised to find out that banks and mortgage companies ask the realtors not disclose that a house is a foreclosure so they can get more money for the homes. Now, all this in my opinion would be okay, if these same mortgage companies and banks had dealt fairly and honestly with the original purchaser, and if these same companies were not receiving bailouts from taxpayers money. We have 1000's of homeless families that could and would appreciate one of these homes.

Anyway we went on to the third house and put in a bid. Within 5 minutes the realtor called us and told us the house that had been on the market for 578 days had sold 10 minutes before we called to make an offer. Go figure the odds in that happening.

On to house number 4. This man has a home that is completely unfinished. He is asking in the neighborhood of an arm and a leg because the house sits across the street from the river. We offered the leg and he turned us down. However, he called 2 weeks after we came home and wanted to negotiate, coming within 5k of our original offer. I countered 10k less, 5k as punishment for saying no the first time. He is thinking about it.

Then we met an awesome realtor named Dafney Love. She showed us several homes and we actually fell in love with a home and the location is awesome. We put in a bid far lower than even she felt the owners would accept. After one counter offer they accepted the bid and we are in the process of trying to close on this home. The original bid contract has expired and we have given them a 2 week extension so far. The owner died as a resident of another state and the Estate is having problems getting all the paperwork needed to get a clear title which is all we asked for to close this sale. I am hoping we get to spend this Thanksgiving in the new house.