As Kari has noted on her blog, we’re in the process of buying a house.
After looking at more houses than I can remember, we were on the verge of making an offer on another property when we saw this one. We were sitting outside the other house when our realtor handed us the listing, we saw it the following Monday, made an offer that Thursday and had it all signed and sealed on Friday.
Today we had the main inspection of the house, which seems to have gone smoothly. There are a few issues for us to work on, but they sound easy, even to someone as unused to DIY as me! Providing the radon inspection (we wouldn’t want to have our brains fried in the night) turns out okay, we’ll close towards the end of July and move in towards the end of August. It’ll keep me busy while missing Greenbelt.
The process is significantly different in the US from in the UK, and I’m rather glad of that. For starters there’s the realtor. She has spied out properties that might suit us, guided us round each one, and managed the whole process for us. And then there’s the offer-making process. Rather than phone up, barter a bit, and agree on an offer which is only guaranteed by our word, our offer was a formal contract. They had a certain amount of time to either agree to it, reject it or make a counter-offer (which they did) and once we accepted and signed that counter-offer we had a contract.
It meant we had to be a little more certain before we made the offer than we might have been in the UK, and it reduced the excitement (no risk of gazzumping) but the excitement seems to go hand in hand with stress, and we’ve had enough of that of late.
So it’s not quite finalised, but it looks like we’re a month away from being homeowners! Photos are of course online, right here.