Offer accepted

We put our offer in for the property yesterday afternoon. This morning they contacted our realtor and countered (we assumed they would). They countered for $3,000 more than what we offered. We expected them to counter $5,000 more (the mid point between their asking price and our offer), so we actually came out $2,000 ahead of what we anticipated. LOL. Works for us! We signed the revised offer and then our realtor sent it back to them to sign. Well, realtor just called. Sellers (who weren't using a realtor) decided to have a realtor look it over (the people that live on the lot next door had told us one of the lady's brother was a realtor in town, so most likely they contacted him) and he wanted to make two minor changes, that really didn't make any difference, according to our realtor. One was that we split costs of any transfer fees related to the water. Well, there is no water/well, so our realtor said it's a moot point. We said, sure change it. So he revised it again and we re-signed it and now waiting for them to sign, hopefully this final offer.

Once they sign it I have to send $1000 earnest money to a title company. I also just had to send $375 to the drafter guy who is doing up our set of plans. That's a 50% deposit, so it was more than the builder said, he thought it would be like $500 total, but we also have a separate shop plans needing drawn up. Hopefully there isn't a lot more that I need to do out of pocket after this. DH also wants to repair the floor in front of our family room french doors and put in new french doors. I have priced those out at Lowes, and for what appears to be pretty much the same kind as we currently have, is $400.  I do have a Lowe's credit card, too, so I plan to put it on that. I don't want to totally drain my savings, unless I have to. The drafter took PayPal, so I paid him that way, using my papal credit account, which gave me 6 months no interest. Hopefully, our place will be sold before that and then I can use our proceeds from the sale to pay these selling/purchasing costs.

Snooty realtor came back this morning. She wasn't quite as snobby, but pretty much. DH said she just seems kind of creepy to him. She did a bunch of comps - as near as she could. There really aren't many places with this acreage and this close in to everything. Everything around us is housing developments where the houses are 5 feet apart and little postage stamp sized lots.  Then she just kind of left all the different comp amounts hanging there (the low was $70,000 lower than her high) and never gave us her opinion on what we should list at. I thought that was really strange, so I said "well, what is your opinion on what we should list at?" and she was still kind of vague, but pretty much said she thinks we'd be ok asking towards the higher end.

I'm really looking forward to meeting again with the one who came yesterday. She will be here on Monday afternoon. She's already sent me links to photo examples of the photographer she uses. Of the 3 realtors we've "interviewed", she's the one who actually acts like she wants to sell our place, acts like she wants the job. She even has a little positive quote as a tagline on her emails. I just like her whole attitude.

Here's another weird thing that came up in all this process. My mortgage broker told me a week or so ago that we should have the inspection done now, before we list. She had a guy call me, and it was like $450.  DH and I talked and just decided that we'd wait and the inspection can be done when we have a buyer make an offer. None of the realtors said this needed to be done first. The realtor from yesterday even mentioned that usually the buyer picks the inspector, because it might not seem as impartial if the seller is picking their own. Makes sense to me, plus in my research it appears that this is usually a buyer paid cost anyway! We could have forked out this money and a buyer could have said, no - we want our own inspection done. I'm really glad we didn't have it done.