House selling

The biggest news we have from September is that our house in South Carolina no longer belongs to us! WE SOLD!!! 👐👐👐

Throughout all the bumps, I had many people ask what was going on and I mentioned a few times that I would probably just share a blog post once it was all said and done to outline our journey, so at some point I just started keeping notes of it all. If for no other reason, this will be something we can look back and giggle about at some point, right? 😉

So, on Tuesday April 23rd we listed our house. At the end of March we had taken a trip up to NY for Jeremy to sit through many interviews and our decision to move was finalized, even though we weren't settled on a particular job or location yet. Between April 24th and April 26th we had 7 showings and ended up with 6 offers. If you had told me then that 5 months later our house still wouldn't be sold, I probably would have puked. We had one in our hand that was full asking price, all cash, no closing costs and only a structural inspection needing to be done. I mean, does it get any better than that?! So we accepted, asking them to move the closing date back 10 days so it would be after Jeremy got done school and that was that! They accepted and we moved forward with the next steps. 

The next day, the buyers wanted to see the house again since her husband hadn't been able to see it on her first visit. They actually wanted to talk to me, which isn't usually advised but I accepted. She seemed like a sweet lady. They were buying the house for her elderly mom and her caregiver. She said she knew just what kind of person I was walking through our house, that they were believes also and that she loved my sign of Jeremiah 29:11 because that was her life verse. 

The inspection happened on May 8th and on May 10th we found out that they had broken the contract and done a full blown inspection instead of just a structural one and came back to us with a list of a dozen RIDICULOUS demands of things to do to the house. This was a big turning point for me. I broke down completely unsure of what was going on or what was going to happen. We denied them all of their requests since our contract was just for a structural inspection. Our realtor fought for us all weekend, without us even knowing about it. She won and contacted us on Sunday, May 12th (Mother's Day) to let us know the buyers were moving forward with the sale! I told her it was the best Mother's Day present she could have given me 😂 Signed papers, officially official. We were moving on June 10th and saying goodbye to our home and life in SC.

On Thursday May 16th, just 4 days later, I got a call from our realtor saying "Please don't worry about this".....and proceeded to tell me that the buyers wanted to be let out of the contract. She said she battled for us again, shaming them for playing games with us when we are a young family with two kids trying to move and that we had 6 offers on the table when we chose them. Their realtor told us that the husband found out he had prostate cancer back when they first put the offer in and it was just becoming too much. We could fight it if we wanted and we would win, but that it would take at least 6 months and a lot of money. She advised us to just let them out of the contract and that we would relist the house. With how things went the first time around, we were even going to increase the price.

At this point I remember my gut wanted to struggle and crumble, but my heart remembered what had just happened less than a week prior. How I got all upset with the inspection demands but then 2 days later everything was fine again. Granted that had crashed and burned at this point but still, God was able!

So, our house went back on the market on May 16th, we had one showing on May 17th and by the end of that day we had two offers on the table - both were actually from previous people that were still interested. We countered back on the best one and on the 18th they told us they weren't ready to make a decision, so we let them go and countered back on the second offer. She accepted and we were under contract again!

We had the inspection on May 28th. She came back with a list of repairs that she wanted done. We accepted to do them all except give her a new AC unit because we were giving her a home warranty that would give her that if she needed it. We also countered back to have her let us do most of the repairs ourselves instead of hiring someone. This included Jeremy's parents coming down so that his dad could help us. Once all of this was complete, closing was set for June 20th.

At the start of June, Jeremy's parents came down to help us with the repairs we agreed to do. Then June 19th came and Jeremy's dad was flying in to help us pack and do the drive up to NY. My mom had planned on doing this, but my Grandpa was going through some health stuff at the same time, so she was needed elsewhere. The truck was rented, we spent the day packing and cleaning and we were going to stay at a hotel for the night so after closing the next day we could pull out and begin our trip to NY. That's when we got word that closing was going to be delayed because of paperwork. We decided to continued with our plans since everything was already packed and we were ready to go. The attorney's had us coming in the next morning to do our side of the paperwork and then the rest would be taken care of the following week. That's when we hit the road and began our journey to NY. 

2 days later we got to NY, 4 days later I left for my National Convention with Usborne Books & More in Oklahoma and 1 day after being there we got a text from our realtor saying that our buyers loan had been rejected and just like that our house was going back on the market again.

This was another big moment for me. I wasn't home and I was in the middle of having the time of my life. I could have crumbled. Crashed and burned. Left to go home. But I said "shit", threw my phone on the bed and continued to curl my hair for our award ceremony we had that night. There was nothing I could do about it. 

We ended up with 3 offers again. One of them was all cash and so to hopefully save us headaches, we chose to move forward with them. A couple days later they requested to be released from the contract with no explanation as to why.......

So, we went back and chose one of the other two offers we had on the table. Our realtor reached out to our last buyer who's loan fell through to see if they would sell our new buyer their inspection report to save us from hopefully having to go through that process again and having more repairs. They did, our new buyer accepted it, saw all that we had already done and asked for no further repairs to be done!!!

At the end of July we got a text from our realtor late at night and my stomach immediately dropped. I immediately knew something was wrong. Low and behold our buyer had lost her job so her loan was denied. 

The house went back on the market. At this point I was getting pretty nervous about how bad our house must be looking to prospective buyers. How many times had it been under contracted and then put back on the market 😩 We had two showings and got one offer. It was a pretty low offer so we countered back and they accepted it. Our 5th contract had begun. 5th time's the charm???

They had 10 days to do an inspection and our realtor was going to try and see if they would also buy our old inspection report to see all we had done. They never responded and with only 2 days left before their 10 days expired we began to think that they weren't even going to do one since we hadn't been notified of anything being scheduled. Then we got a repair request out of nowhere, they had done one without telling us, and it was a ridiculously long and obnoxious list full of unreasonable requests.

(NOTE: The day before we got this repair addendum we had found and fallen in love with a home in NY that we wanted to make ours!)

So on Sunday, August 11th we countered back on the repair addendum in SC AND submitted an offer on our dream house in NY. After 3 days of silence we finally heard back from our SC buyers that they were accepting our counter offer.

Theeeeen.......(are you guys dizzy yet? still following along?) We found out that we had to repeat our CL100 (wood and termite inspection) since it had been longer than 30 days since our last one cleared. The friend of a friend who did our first one was no longer in business, so we paid for another one to be done from our previous pest control company. It came back with 3 red flags. Since our buyer was getting an FHA loan, we had to clear each red flag and we only had 8 days before closing.

3 days before our closing, evacuations were ordered for Hurricane Dorian. Because of the impending storm, all of the contractors in the area were busy boarding up houses so we were having a hard time finding someone to come clear our red flags. We finally tracked one down and he went to go check things out. One of the issues was inactive fungi on our attic, but upon further investigation the contractor determined that it was actually active fungi. The good news was, our roof is covered by our HOA, the bad news again was that everyone was leaving town/closed because of the hurricane. I spent an entire day making phone calls and sending emails and was able to get a contractor through the HOA to go look at the damage. He sent me pictures after it was all said and done. We literally had a hole in our roof which was incredibly infuriating because our HOA had come to repair that exact spot back in our other contract. They left us with a hole in our roof.....(never, EVER buy a house with an HOA). We were finally able to get all repairs done that we needed to and after all of that scrambling, that afternoon our closing was canceled because the lender wouldn't release funds with the hurricane approaching and possible damages occurring.

After the hurricane passed we got a new closing date. Because so many things had been delayed by the storm, the soonest we could close was September 18th. This meant we had to pay another month of our mortgage AND it was awful close to our date of closing in NY on the 25th.

At 6pm on September 17th we got our final paperwork to approve the closing. They had the purchase price wrong and our buyers realtor admitted to dropping the ball on sending the correct documents over to the lender. She asked to us illegally pay our buyer after closing so that things could proceed as scheduled, we painfully declined and then we were able to readjust the closing costs we agreed to pay to make up for the difference needed. 

On Wednesday, September 18th our closing went through. The funds were wired, the papers were signed. It is DONE! 

Leaving South Carolina was an extremely hard thing to do and continues to feel bittersweet, but saying goodbye to that house and having this process over with was nothing but SWEET!!!!

I wish I could say that I showed incredible faith throughout this process, never faltered and trusted His leading every step of the way. I failed SO MANY times. There were so many times I was bitter, wallowing in the unfairness of it all, perfectly "happy" just being mad at the world and wondering when it was going to be our time. But then you break and you realize that this isn't living. I can't just live like this until things do go my way and then be happy again. That isn't victory! I'm not the same person I was in March of this year. Although I wish that our growth could just magically happen while we are sleeping, I know that God's work is never done with us and this won't be the last time I'm stretched. But I am really thankful for this season to look back on. We are always looking for an answer to why right? There are so many bubbles in my life that I still don't have that answer to, some that I may never get and this one might not even be accurate, but along with the growth, strength and lessons learned ---- if we had closed on our house in SC at any other given time, with any of the other contracts we were under, we wouldn't have found our house in NY. The house we are purchasing came on the market the day after our 5th contract was signed 💕 Who's to say if that has anything to do with it. I certainly have no idea. It was pretty "awe"some when first realized. But maybe that's not even the end of the story. That deal isn't even done yet so who's to say what the story will still unfold. All of it would still be worth it in the end to just have grown the way we have. So that maybe the next time won't be quite as painful. Maybe then it won't take as long? 😉

Thank you to each and every person who stood by us, even be it through the computer screen, and prayed with us through every step of the way!