Making an Offer

It was late on a Wednesday night that we kind of settled on the decision to officially make an offer. The plan was that Adam would call our realtor, Steven, the next day to figure out what the next step would be to set everything up. About mid-morning on Thursday, Steven called Adam and said "There was an offer put in on the house today, but if you want to put an offer in by the end of the day, the seller will accept it as a competing offer." Ahh!! Time to move fast! Within a matter of about an hour, with the help of our lender and realtor, we got all of our paperwork together and sent in our official offer! The scary part was, we had NO idea what we were up against with the competing offer. Crossing our fingers at this point!

The rest of Thursday was just a waiting game. Adam had already been planning on coming to Charleston that night to stay for the weekend, and I was so happy that it worked out for us to be in the same place during this process. Late Thursday night, Steven sent us an email (since it was too late to call) with a counter offer.

Friday, as Adam sat in my chair getting some fillings done, he was frantically emailing/texting/calling back and forth between our lender and realtor deciding what our counter offer should be and keeping me updated while I worked. It was a little nerve-wracking since we had no idea what was going on with the competing offer. We sent in our counter offer Friday afternoon, and the waiting game began again.

Friday evening we tried to keep ourselves busy and occupied. After cooking dinner at home, we drove out to North Charleston to do some appliance shopping (dreaming and hoping for a soon-to-be house) and, of course I never let a trip to North Charleston go by without getting some ColdStone ice cream.

We were getting a little anxious that we had yet to hear back. We finished shopping and pulled into ColdStone. At this point I thought that we either didn't get it, or we weren't going to find out until Saturday. We started to get out and Adam started to leave his phone sitting in the car. I told him bring it in, just in case. Although I really did not think they would happen to call for the short time we were in ColdStone.  Well, as fate would have it, Steven called while we were stuck in the middle of the line at ColdStone. Adam answered and walked outside, while I continued to wait in line. He finally came back in and told me they accepted our offer!! So we celebrated with, what else, ColdStone! How appropriate. :)

During the process of the counter offers the sellers had asked for a few months leeway before closing date to allow them to look for a new house. Given our situation and the fact that we knew we wouldn't need to actually live in the house until April or May, we told them when we sent our counter offer back that we would be willing to extend the closing date as far out as necessary. Our realtor really thinks this may be what sealed the deal for us over the competing offer!

He emailed us the contract the next morning and the rest was history! On August 10, 2013 we signed the contract, and on October 30, 2013 we officially became homeowners!