The House Is Ours (Probably)

So it's all over.  The original sellers--the ones who walked away from the deal on Monday night--have come back to the table.  All has been forgiven.  The band and trumpets are sounding.  The parade grounds are filled.

Here's what happened.  After our disastrous and dispiriting Monday night, we moved on to a new house.  We began to have our realtor feel out the new seller about terms and conditions.  (I should say that this second house was one we'd seen on our house-hunting trip last month, and that it had always been our second choice).  We spent all of Tuesday mentally adjusting to the idea that the new house--Swimming Pool House, as I call it (because it had, in the back yard, a giant greenhouse.  No, no)--would be, if not as good as the first house, still perfect acceptable.  It was smaller, yes, and a little more generic.  And there was no real backyard.  And we'd never wanted a pool.  And it was haunted by the ghost of Stonewall Jackson.  And there a pit of iron spikes in the middle of the master bath.  But other than, that, you know.  It was fine.

So we had mostly gotten our minds around the idea that Swimming Pool house was going to be our new home.  And then, on the same day our agent had been dispatched to Swimming Pool house to do some scouting, he got a call.  The original sellers--from the First House--had a new offer.  They would give us [substantial sum] off of the price of the home if we'd come back to the table.  In money terms, it was a clear home run.  Even adding in all the repairs we'd have to make, we'd be getting the house at a great price.  The only consideration was the sellers themselves.  Had their lack of forthrightness in disclosing the plumbing situation the first time round ruled them out as someone to do business with?

In the end, we decided it hadn't.  Maybe they aren't the most ethical people out there, but given all the many, many inspections we've performed on the house, there seems very little chance that it could have any other hidden problems.  I should also say, though I don't want to go into details on a semi-public forum, that we've since learned something about one of the sellers that has made me reconsider my earlier judgement of their lack of ethics.  They have some other big things going on in their life-- troubling things--and it's possible they weren't so much unethical as...what...distracted?

Anyway, point is, we got the first house--the one we wanted--and we're feeling good.  Tired, emotionally, but good.  There's now the issue of effecting a large amount of repairs and remodeling in  the relatively brief window between the time the Sellers depart and we move in.

But that's a story for another post.  Or, more likely, several.