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!

The Beginning

It all started once we found out that Adam would be taking an assistant principal job in Easley for this school year and we started to seriously consider the idea of buying a house..

When should we do it? Is it too early? 

I still had a year left of dental school here in Charleston and had (still have) no idea where I would land a job (although we were obviously planning on it being SOMEWHERE in Upstate, SC). At first, it was just fun to cruise my realtor.com app and dream of the possibilities.

After enough cruising, talking, and dreaming, we knew we had a decision to make. The debate boiled down to whether we should look and buy now, or wait until next Spring once I was ready to graduate and move right in. 

We decided to contact a realtor just to do a CASUAL search. Nothing serious, just a fun look to see if there is anything out there worth considering immediately. Narrowing our search to Easley was a pretty easy decision. We love Easley, and with both of our families living here, it is definitely where we spend most of our time. I also felt confident that, should we decide to buy early (before I had a job lined up), that living in Easley would not limit my possibilities. Easley offers a good central location in the Upstate where I could easily consider jobs in Clemson, Anderson, Greenville, etc that are all within driving distance. 

So, we made a list of some of the favorites we had seen online, and on a hot Sunday last July we did a marathon search! We saw somewhere around 9 houses that day, but the one I couldn't stop thinking about was "B Street", as we kept referring to it.

This house actually caught my eye one of the very first times I ever started looking at houses online... long before we even really started to seriously consider this idea. I remember showing it to Adam and talking about all the possibilities it had way before we were in a position to even consider the idea of buying a house. He likes to tell me I had this house completely renovated in my head months before we even looked at it. Needless to say, it did not disappoint in real life! 

We knew we had a decision to make, and Adam and I talked on the phone for almost my entire three-hour drive back to Charleston that night discussing the pros and cons. Is it worth buying now? Are we READY to buy now? Can we afford to buy now? Should we be patient and wait? Will we regret not getting it if we wait and buy in the Spring? So many things to consider.

I wasn't going to be able to come back up to Easley for several more weeks after that visit, so we decided to use those weeks to really think about our decision, and if it was still on the market by the time I came back up to Easley, we would take another look and make our decision.

About a week later, Adam decided to take another look at it with our realtor. It was the very first house we looked at, out of 9, on our original search day, so we didn't know when we were looking at it that it would end up being our favorite. So Adam wanted to look at it with a closer eye, knowing this might be the one. 

He called me after looking at it and was completely sold. He had been the more hesitant one all along, so with his approval I was starting to realize this may actually become a reality. Our realtor, Steven, told us that if we think we wanted this house, do not wait until I was able to come back up and take another look. He said, "If you woke up tomorrow and found out this house was off the market, would you be upset?" The answer was a big fat YES!! Meaning we had a BIG decision to make, and FAST!

After a long conversation with my mom (the smartest decision-maker I know) we decided the risk of not buying this house and regretting it was much greater than the risk of buying now and wishing we would have waited until the Spring. So with that, we were ready to make an offer!!