So I haven’t officially withdrawn from the contract yet.
Why, you ask? Because the sellers practically begged me not to.
Now don’t worry. I’m not locking myself in to anything. But they found out that I was going to walk and they begged me to let them do every single repair I asked for and then make my decision. They even offered to pay for my inspector to come back. So I’m not out anything. (I did ask about eight hundred times whether or not this was going to inadvertently lock me into anything and it wont – which is what I thought based on the paperwork. See, that law degree is coming in handy!)
But my decision is not made yet. I’m doing a lot of research on the repairs that need to be done and it turns out that these are common problems in older houses. That makes me feel better. They also brought a mold remediation company in and gave me a 2 year guarantee on that. Not bad at all.
Still, this afternoon, I’m going out with my Realtor to look at other houses. Just to see what’s out there. I may find something perfect. I may not find anything. But for now, I’m keeping all of my options open.
Megan is a 30-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:
In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance. It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information. It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck. While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.
While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.
Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.
So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan. I needed to budget. I needed to know what I was spending my money on. I needed to prepare for the future.
I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way. I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.
That’s really interesting! Good thing you’re being so wary and thorough with this but it sounds like it could come through and work out perfectly for you.
Thanks for sharing too by the way, your journey to get the mortgage, view houses, find one and go through the process of closing in on one’s great to read 🙂