I’m a first time homebuyer, learning new processes and the steps to take in buying a home. My wife and I are gathering information from all different sources. It is sometimes frustrating, but we are excited at the same time. I know that in the end it will all be worth it.
Below is a chronicle of one of my recent experiences …
My wife and I found this house on the market which was perfect for our family. We had been searching for more than a month. We made an offer and it was accepted by the seller! Wow, we got so excited! We couldn’t believe our offer was accepted!
We did all we should be doing as far the paper work, completing the contract package, earnest money, pre-qualifying, etc. Everything was going smoothly. We received an executed sales contract and completed the inspections. Suddenly two weeks after receiving our executed contract, my agent contacted us and said, “We’ve got bad news from the seller. Your contract has been terminated/cancelled due to “unknown title issues”. No further information was given. My wife and I couldn’t believe this could be happening… everything was going smoothly.
After receiving the news, we were very sad and disappointed but decided to start back into searching for properties. Again, we found another property. Yeah! I told my wife – this is perfect, the listing price, nice area, big house, built in 2006, recently listed. We were so excited again and were ready to view the property and submit an offer.
I contacted the listing agent and asked if the property was active. She said it was available and newly listed on the market. I told her I was ready to make an offer. Then she says, “Just to let you know, this a SHORT SALE property. If you make an offer you’ll probably close within 2-4 months.” The first thing that pops in my head, Short Sale – oh, no! I told her to let me do some more investigation and discuss with my wife. “By the way”, I said to the agent, “Did you know the company I work for is offering a HOMETELOS LEO PROGRAM to homeowners like your client who are going through a short-sale process? It has been a successful program for homeowners who qualify.” I explained the process to the listing agent and she said it sounded like a very interesting program and she would check it out at www.hometelos.com.
After hanging up the phone, the first thing that I thought about was if the homeowner knew they could do their short sale with a successful program like our HOMETELOS LEO PROGRAM, it would be much easier for me. I was confident the purchase and closing would happen sooner than a normal short sale, and would also benefit the homeowner and listing agent by successfully selling the home with no hassles. Unfortunately, since the listing agent could not guarantee a quick close, we were forced to give the purchase a lot of thought and consideration.
Like I said before, we did some investigation and gathered information about the short sale listings from different sources. Although we really liked this house and wanted to make an offer, we had a limited period of time. So for right now, we’ll need to skip this one. If only the homeowner and their bank were able to use a wonderful program like LEO – it would be a different story. Our goal is to purchase our first home before Dececember 1, 2009 so that we can receive the IRS credit of $8,000 for first time home buyers.
So here we are, still searching for a home…wish me luck!