We started looking at a few houses to kind of "test the waters" early last month. Our demands were fairly specific. We wanted to be near Custer, have room for the motor home to park, a two car garage for the bike and truck plus a view of the Black Hills, all within our limited budget. You can see we were asking for quite a bit. We scanned some of the local internet real estate listings for several weeks but found our choices pretty limited. We drove by a few and finally decided to take a closer look at one so we called the listing Realtor. She met us there the next morning and once we were inside it was disappointing. The house was fairly small with only 2 bedrooms, no garage, no view but it did have a nice big yard with access to park the motor home. We thanked her for showing it to us but it just wasn't what we were looking for. She told us she would keep an eye out and let us know if something popped up that met our needs then she mentioned, in passing, that there was a house that might be available but was above the price range we gave. She gave us the address for a drive by and her card if we were interested in looking at it.
We drove by and talked about it some and decided to take a closer look. We both felt like it was over our budget but thought we could at least use it to compare other houses to so we gave her a call and she came right over. She told us the house had been on the market for several months and the owner had already moved into a condo and was anxious to sell. One deal, early on, had fallen through and she felt he "may" be willing to lower the price below market value to sell it.
We liked the house and it met all of our criteria so, after discussing it for several days we made an offer on it. Most of you know how these things go, low offer, high counter offer. We certainly had a maximum price in mind for the house as I'm sure he had a "lowest I will go" price as well. We got his counter offer which was, as expected, fairly high and we figured this was out of our league. We made a final offer a little higher then our original and he accepted! We have spent the last month "riding the roller coaster" of mortgage applications, credit checks, home inspections, appraisals etc. That's probably the reason the blog has been a little sparse lately. We are both a little above our optimum stress levels! :-)
Last week all the stars lined up and the closing was set for 12/23/14. We did a final walk through with our Realtor and mentioned it would be nice to be able to put some things in the garage early. She called the seller and he said "sure thing" in fact he told them give us a key to the house so we could do whatever we needed. I love small towns, lots of nice people! :-)
We ended up emptying our cargo trailer into one of the garages and even prepped and painted the master bedroom and closet.
We, as of yesterday, are now homeowners once again. The house is 3 bedroom 1900 sq ft with 2 car attached garage that has a gravel pad next to it that is large enough to park both the motor home and cargo trailer. We are within the city limits of Custer so we have city water, sewer and, in an hour or so, cable TV :-)
Oh yea, we also have a view of the Black Hills.
Life is good, Merry Christmas everyone. I'll keep you posted. :-)
