Buying a home in California Part 3: The offer

by Mike · 2 comments

Wow things have been incredibly busy around here. I didn’t intend there to be such a long delay since the last update in the series, but let’s just say that there have been other things keeping me from writing.

Stacy and I found a property in San Jose that we thought could work in January. It wasn’t perfect, but the layout worked for us. It had 4 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a large kitchen, and a small yard. The condition of things wasn’t great and it was hard for me to see past that. Stacy saw a lot more potential in the house.

At the exact same time, I found a house that I really saw potential in. It had a different style layout, and a larger and better condition yard, but there were somethings that Stacy just couldn’t see past.

After some discussion, we decided to make an offer for the house that she liked. This was going against our original plan of waiting until more inventory came on the market in the spring, but we thought we had an opportunity to get a property at a price that allowed us to immediately renovate some things.

Our realtor was very helpful during this process. Even though the property had its price reduced quite a bit before we came to see it, we decided that we wanted to offer less than what it was currently listed at. Quite a bit less, and hoped that the sellers would agree to the price.

We were in luck. Our offer was $25,000 less than the current asking price, and it was accepted. Next up, we get to learn about the closing process in California and how it differs from other states.

{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }

David Haas May 1, 2012 at 12:14 pm

Hi,

I have a quick question about your
blog, do you think you could email me?

David

Tim Richmond June 19, 2012 at 2:27 pm

Even an old house that needs some fixing up can save you some money over a new property in both the long and short runs (not to mention that they usually have so much more character), so you probably did the right thing. I can’t wait to see more entries in this series.

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