So my clients, Rich ~n~ Mari, posted their home buying story on their blog and it's such a great explaination that I'm going to copy and paste it here:
Rich and I put an offer on a short sale (we call it house #1) at the end of October. That particular short sale could only look at one offer at a time and we were in the first place spot with a really strong offer so we were in a great place. We loved the house and thought the short sale would maybe take a month. We were WAY wrong. 3 months later, Rich was looking at houses online and saw a house (house #2)in the same town home community and we thought it was really cute so we called Rachael (our Realtor). Rachael took us over to walk through the house and we loved it. It was so cute and a different layout the house #1. While we were at house #2 Rachael said there is another house (house #3) 2 doors down that she wanted to show us. We walked over to the house and we really liked it. So we decided to put offers on both #2 and #3 so we had a total of 3 offers on the table, then we waited. House #3 got back to us pretty quickly, but we liked house #2 better so we were hesitant to just accept #3. #2 was taking forever so we just decided to go with #3, pulling our first place spot in house #1 and pulling out offer from house #2. We thought we had a house for about a day and a half, then they emailed us and said that they didn't mean to accept our offer, they thought our offer was almost 10 grand more than it really was. Neither of us had signed any documents so legally they didn't do anything wrong but we were devastated. House #2 went under contract with someone else and we lost our first place spot in #1 that we had been waiting for for 3 months. It was one of the hardest days ever. We counter offered with 3 and we went to go look at another house (house #4) in the same community as the others. We LOVED this house except for the fact that the previous owners had painted everything green. I mean EVERYTHING...ceilings walls and baseboards. It was a little ridiculous, but it was great with everything else. it was bigger than the others and had a walkout basement. So we put an offer on that house too. They quickly countered with barley less than the asking price so we countered with barley more than our first offer. we didn't hear from them for over a week. Meanwhile the people that went under contract with house #2 ended up backing out so we put our offer back on #2 and got the house! We didn't drop our offer on house #4 right away. We loved house #2. We actually were planning on moving in, we showed our families and everything and then house #4 accepted our offer...it was 10 grand less than #2 and it was bigger and had the walk out basement and a balcony in the back of the house. The only downfall was the paint but for 10 grand I think we'll manage to paint. So the bottom line is WE HAVE A HOUSE! We are so happy! We will be moving in soon and we couldn't be happier. We really feel like this all happened for a reason and we are so thankful that we got our favorite house. It is an adorable 3 bedroom 2 1/2 bathroom 2400 square feet with an unfinished basement.
(back to Rachael here) Then Rich & Mari posted another post on their blog entitled "Our Awesome Realtor". Reading that post just made my month! I don't want to toot my own horn but here's what they said:
We FINALLY closed on our house today and we are so pumped! It still doesn't feel real. Our realtor was the best decision we made about buying a house. As many of you know we went through some pretty dramatic things while trying to buy a house and she walked us through every step and even went above and beyond what a normal realtor would have done. I would recommend her to everyone she was awesome. Her name is Rachael Elliot. If you are looking for a house and want her to help you let me know, you wont regret it, she is the best!
(back to Rachael again) Isn't that so sweet!? I always can tell that 99% of my clients are grateful for what I do for them and that we are friends but it was so nice to get it in writting. I also love that they referred all of their friends in the blogsphere to me! Thanks Rich ~n~ Mari!!!
I had never heard of Cedar Valley until I met Luke & Wendy. Luke is from Wyoming and so he likes wide open spaces and having lots of space and privacy. Cedar Valley is in Utah County about 15-20 mins south west of Eagle Mountain. The first time I met them was at this house. It was a short sale so we didn't get our hopes up that it would work out. We saw about 150 homes from Cedar Valley to Orem to Grantsville to Ogden! After seeing all of those homes the short sale in Cedar Valley worked out (and when I say worked out it took a lot of work to get to that point) and we closed 4 months after we wrote the offer! Luke & Wendy were living in a travel trailer at her moms house and they were sooo excited to finally get into a house. They sold a house back in 2006 and so they qualified as first time buyers. They'll be gettin' $8000 from the government soon! Their home is so gorgeous. It was built in 2007 and has has 3218 Sq Feet which fits all of their furniture (which Wendy likes) and is in the middle of nowhere and has a huge spot for RV parking (what Luke likes). They got a screaming good deal (that everyone, including me, likes) They got the home for $175k and the bank paid for $5,000 of their closing costs!
