Here's a rundown of what happened at the end of January and the reason we're not moving into the house we were building.
| Friday, 1/17/03 | We lower our house price to $179,950 |
| Saturday, 1/18/03 | The house we are building with Centex is near completion of drywall. Since our house has not sold, Centex doesn’t want to risk having to sell our house to someone else, so they give us 2 options: 1) pay a $5000 non-refundable deposit; and they will continue building as planned, or 2) they strip several of our options off of the house (patio, upgraded carpet, Corian countertops, hardwood floors, etc) and build it as a spec house. They gave us one day to decide. We had no idea this was coming. |
| Monday, 1/20/03 | Since we a) don’t want to risk $5000 and b) don’t want the stripped-down version of our house, we decided against both of the 2 options they gave us and chose option 3) We cancel our contract with Centex and get our $2000 deposit back. |
| Tuesday, 1/21/03 | We receive contract to purchase our house, full offer, no contingencies. We accept. How's that for timing? We do not try to get the Centex house back because, by now, we don’t want to deal with them anymore. We know something better will come along. |
| Saturday, 1/25/03 | House shopping all day. We are narrowed down to 2 houses, both on the other side of town, both new. |
| Monday, 1/27/03 | Still cannot decide between 2 houses. We look on Realtor.com again for any new listings. We find one on our side of town that looks good. |
| Tuesday, 1/28/03 | 9:00 am: We ask agent to show us the house at lunch today; 12:30 pm: We see the house, we like it, we write a contract on it; 8:00 pm: We receive a call telling us the contract is accepted. Cool! All is well. |
| Thursday, 1/30/03 | We hear there’s a problem with the buyers of our house. Turns out they actually DO have to sell their house before buying ours, and they did not show up for their loan meeting. Not good. Our house goes back on the market, and we may lose the house we’re buying (we haven’t told the sellers yet). |
| Sunday, 2/2/03 | 3 showings on our house today. |
| Tuesday, 2/4/03 | We receive another contract from one of the showings on Sunday. Full offer, but contingent on the closing on the sale of their house (it’s already sold). We accept the contract, and send a contract release to our first buyers. They were still trying to move forward and sell their house, but we don’t want to deal with them, since they essentially lied on their contract with us. All is well again – for now . . . . . |