After Lance and I both did some research on the lot, the property still looked to be a good one, well suited for what we’re looking to do.  And after some crazy nights at home discussing the property, what we could do with it, seriously evaluating our finances, Joel and I pulled the trigger and submitted an offer four days later on April 23^rd.

The property is bank owned – Wells Fargo Home Mortgage (The Bank) is the owner.  The land was previously owned by someone (who Lance actually knew from a few years back) who had intended on putting a home on it (circa 2007), but after being relocated to the east coast for work needed to sell the land.  He originally purchased the home for $325,000!  Since he couldn’t sell it for what he owed, the bank foreclosed on the property in 2012.

The asking price for the home was now $240,000.  Lance found out that the last time the property was on the market, there were multiple offers, so we knew we had to come in strong and quickly before others saw that it was available again.  That said, the listing agent didn’t know of any other offers coming in, so we chose to write the offer for $230,000 with a $10,100 escalation clause.  The offer was submitted and now it was a waiting game. Then Lance called back and said that unfortunately, The Bank will not accept any escalation clauses on the offer.  We had to submit our BEST AND FINAL offer.  Ugh – Joel and I deliberated for hours on what to do.  We loved the property – and submitted the offer of $240,100.  Now, let the waiting begin.

Or so we thought – hours after submitting our best and final offer, the listing agent told Lance that The Bank was going to lower the price to $209,000, the reasoning still didn’t make any sense to Joel or I at all since they already had an offer from us above their old asking price, but we didn’t care.  It was fantastic that the price was lowered! So after thinking about it and contemplating still submitting an offer for $240,100, or $230,000, we decided to submit an offer for $226,000.  The price is a little random, but we figured that it might be just above someone else’s $225,000 offer.  And although we could have submitted an offer for less, we originally were willing to pay the $240,000 and thought we would hate ourselves if we lost it by only submitting an offer for $209,000.  So there it was – April 24^th and we submitted our BEST AND (this time) FINAL offer of $226,000.