Inspection tomorrow
First, let me say that I had no idea this could be this hard. It’s been two weeks and two days since we put our offer in on the house, and two weeks and one day since it was accepted. Way back then, our realtor scheduled an inspection for us tomorrow, and though we knew we had some negotiations to do over structural repairs, we figured it would be easy enough to come to terms and move forward with the purchase.
As it turns out, it wasn’t until Friday afternoon that it was clear we were going to be able to go forward, and as late as Friday morning we were bracing ourselves to walk away from the whole thing if the sellers asked us to make any more concesssions. By then, we’d been through so many ups and downs it’s hard to keep track — finding out that the repairs would only cost $3,500; learning that said repairs would likely cause the inside of the addition to essentially explode; hearing that another contractor had an alternate plan sans explosion, but with a $19,000 price tag; the back and forth with each other as we decided how much we were willing to contribute to the repairs, or whether it was time for us to walk away; waiting two days while the sellers ran out the clock, leaving us minimal time to negotiate if we wanted to keep our inspection appointment; the back and forth with the sellers, as we agreed to pay twice as much for the repairs as we’d offered; and finally, Friday, agreeing to give the sellers pretty much everything they wanted, but taking some of their furniture to save a bit of face, and making peace with the fact that though we were contributing more than we wanted to, we were, at the end of the day, paying a fair price for the house even with the repairs.
So tomorrow, 9 a.m., we inspect. The good news is that the house has already been through one inspection already — the inspection that discovered the structural issues that caused the last sale to fall through. We’ve got a copy of that report, and most of the major things found during that inspection have been fixed. Unless there are any major surprises on the second inspection, we hope that we might actually be able to close before our original July 27 date, and we’re hoping that carrot will incent the sellers, who are already in a new house, to be a little bit more responsive than they were last week. Today it finally seemed safe again to be looking at kitchen cabinets, to be discussing the merits of gas cooktops and Corian sinks, to be talking about which light fixtures Melissa couldn’t stand and was going to have to replace, and to start entertaining the spectacle of transporting our stuff the one block from our current home to our new one.
