Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Contingency Update Part 2

According to our contract, we had 72 hours to decide whether or not to lift the contingency.  We took the full time in order to weigh our options, and in the end, decided that though we would be approved for both mortgages, it was a gamble we just weren't willing to take having been burned by that before.  I felt bad for taking all that time.

When I called our sales rep last Tuesday to let her know, she told me that she had heard through the grapevine that the person who wanted our lot was unsure what they were doing.  The sales rep's manager said they would give this person a deadline of Sunday to determine what they wanted.

Fast forward to yesterday: I emailed our sales rep to find out if a decision had been made.  After a week, this person finally decided that they do want our lot.  So, we are moving to the lot next door.  I don't recall if I mentioned this, but the new lot has a lot premium.  Without us even asking, Ryan has waived the fee for us.  It was a lot we had originally considered and though it's not our first choice, it's a great lot.  It's the last cul-de-sac lot in the plan, so I don't know what we will do if someone comes in and wants it.

Thanks everyone for your support.

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Contingency Update

After speaking with our loan officer, we got approval to go ahead with the build.  However, we opted not to start.  As much as we wanted to move forward, we are concerned with selling our current home.  We live in a great neighborhood, but we haven't had many showings.  If we were getting people looking at our home consistently, we would be less worried about moving ahead with the build.  But, in the 2.5 months our house has been listed, we've only had two showings :(

We've decided to move to the lot next to the one that we originally wanted.  I personally don't know if I could live next door to the lot we really wanted, but time will tell.

We are also considering other nearby communities that might have better lots available.  There are so many communities in the area where we want to be that we have options still.  Though it's not what we had originally planned, we choose to see it as a blessing in disguise to force us to look at other options that may end up being better.

Thanks for all your support everyone :)

Monday, November 7, 2011

The Dreaded Phone Call

We arrived home yesterday afternoon to a cryptic voicemail from one of our sales reps.  We knew immediately that our lot must have been sold.  Sure enough, another sales rep (not either of ours) sold our lot on a non-contingent contract.  Our main sales rep K is on vacation, so B was voted to make the call.  I felt bad for him as he seemed a little nervous as to our reaction.

B laid out our choices: Lift our contingency and go ahead with our build or select another lot and wait for this to happen again.  Of course, he didn't mention option 3: walk away.  We are probably not in a position to lift our contingency.  There is a lot available right next to the first lot we selected.  It's a little bit smaller and has a lot premium due to some very small green space (otherwise known as weeds) that it borders.  This is the last cul-de-sac lot remaining at this stage in the plan.  There will be more opened up eventually, but not in the near future.

We have continued to look throughout this time as we were keeping our options open.  We will probably move over to that other lot so that we are able to keep our pricing.  It just stinks that we have gone through the entire process and spent so much time on this house.  I wish we didn't do all our selections already.  We put in a lot of time and effort to have to walk away.  The only other remaining lots besides the one next to our original one are on the main street.  There are about 75 houses in the current plan, which would mean all of those cars driving past us daily.  We have kids and don't really want to deal with traffic, hence the cul-de-sac.

We were well informed when we signed our contingency contract that this was a possibility. I'm not upset with Ryan because we had a feeling this would happen if our house took awhile to sell.  It's just disappointing that we're not going to have the lot that we felt was the best one for us.