House #48: Second Contract

I posted a couple weeks ago about House #48 being taken off the market and then put back on, but we actually kept it off the market a couple extra weeks to do some additional punch-list work. We just put it back on the market this past weekend…

Turns out our timing was good — we received three offers within two days! The first offer was $5K under asking, the second offer was right at asking (with an “escalation clause”) and the third offer was $5K above asking. An escalation clause is basically a clause in the contract that says, “Here is our offer, but if you receive another offer for higher, we’ll increase our offer above that one…up to a certain amount.” Their escalation clause increased their offer from asking price to $1000 more than the highest offer, which was $5K over asking. So, ultimately, the escalation clause put their offer at $6K over asking.

We ultimately took their offer. It’s a clean offer — they have an inspection period, but aren’t asking for any closing cost assistance and they want to close in 6 weeks. Even after the fiasco with the first offer and all the repairs we had to do, we’ll still do pretty well on this deal.

I’ll have more to say once we get past the inspection and appraisal…