We have verbal acceptance on our next house — House #24 — and we expect to have it formally under contract in the next day or so. It’s actually pretty amusing how we ended up with this house…
It’s on a small street of about 10 houses that we drive past all the time. The house on the corner (the one we drive past) has been for sale for quite a while, but was listed much higher than we were willing to pay. Then one day, I saw the house on the MLS, and the price had dropped considerably to a point where we’d be very interested in putting in an offer.
I gave my project manager the address and sent him to view the house, and he liked it. He suggested we take a look and put in an offer.
We drove to the house, and noticed right away that the agent listed on the MLS listing was different than the agent on the sign in the yard. I didn’t have the listing with me (I knew where the house was located and we have a realtor’s key to get in), but I assumed that the seller just changed their agent at the time they dropped the price. I looked around the house, and it was in fantastic shape, and was well worth the full list price.
We put in an offer that evening.
The next day, I mentioned to my project manager that we had put in an offer on the house, and I mentioned how surprised I was that a house at that price had nice hardwoods, granite countertops, etc. My PM acted confused, and said, “Did we see the same house?”
After a bit of back and forth, it dawned on me that the house we looked at wasn’t actually the house in the listing! Even worse, the house we made an offer on (the one in the listing) we still hadn’t seen! The houses look identical from the outside, so I understood how we made that mistake…but I still couldn’t believe we had made such a rookie mistake.
Anyway, it turns out that the actual house we put the bid on was definitely worth the price we offered as well, so when the bank accepted our offer, we were still thrilled. But, it will be a long time before I forget how I put an offer on the wrong house (and didn’t have any contingencies in the contract to back out when the offer was accepted!).
Therefore, this house will always be referred to as The Wrong House!
I’ll post pictures and more details in my next post…
Glad to hear that it was still a deal for the right house.
So the bank did not even counter with terms or anything? Sometimes I bank on that when I want to put an offer in quickly (not offering full price though) and will actually go out and verify everything if their counter is decent enough to show that they will play ball.
Looking forward to seeing it.
Hey Danny,
By the time we were ready to put in our offer, the bank had already asked for “Highest and Best” from each of the buyers who submitted offers. So, we turned in our best offer, which is what was accepted by the bank.
We’re actually planning to wholesale this one…I’ll post more details in the next day or two…
That’s too funny. I hired a surveyor a few years ago and he surveyed the house next door instead of mine.
I work in the real estate department at the local power company and we tore down the wrong house.
Mark
So even at full price there is still room for you to make a profit on resale?
I wish I was running into this kind of property. All I am finding is houses that I have to offer $30, 40, 50k under asking price to make it a deal…and this are houses that need $30, 40, 50k worth or repairs!