Real Estate Rollercoaster

So last night was an emotionally tense one. Let's recap, shall we?

The tenants only let the realtor show the place on Wednesday's at 6pm. Which means the inspectors can only come at that time too. Now, when we signed the offer letter on Sunday (submitted it Monday and it was accepted Tuesday), Steve had put that we would remove the 'subject to' lines by midnight Wednesday. This in effect means that our offer is then concrete and the place is ours. This gave us no time to review the inspection report, or even have another good look and a round of discussion. The night had so many little things go wrong, that it left a bad taste in our mouths. Then, at about 7pm, Steve says to us that we need to have the bank see the inspection, along with all our documents, and have approved financing before the 'subject to' lines are lifted (by midnight).

This was impossible.

Basically it came down to either we close on the offer (take out the 'subject to' lines) and risk that the bank will actually lend us the amount of money we need. That's a huge half-a-million dollar debt over our heads that we would be looking at if anything went wrong. What a nightmare. Plus we were told that there was another couple who was looking at the place last night who had an offer in their hands, waiting for ours to expire. That is a lot of pressure. Either we risk a whole lot of money and possibly screw ourselves big-time, or we lose our offer on the townhome, opening it up for others to snatch, and thereby losing it.

I mean, how bad did we want this place? It actually doesn't allow pets, and I am never giving up Sukii, so we decided that she was small and quiet enough that no one would even know she was there. It doesn't allow BBQs of any kind on the patio, but we were going to have one anyway. The fact sheet put out on the property by the realtor had false information: it said pets were allowed, and there is no "Clubhouse". The building right beside the end unit (ours) is full of young people shouting and gathering in groups outside most nights, hence very noisy. The tenants are also a pain in the ass, as they seem very set in their ways and raise a stink seemingly about anything. One good thing is that we don't have to honour their year long lease if we don't want to, and evict them with two months notice. That would be fun kicking them out. I can just picture a lawsuit coming our way if we don't play this by the book with them.

Those are a lot of compromises that we had to think on. So it finally came down to crunch time and Alex made the call to Steve. We couldn't do it. The timeline was too close, and we couldn't risk so much money on something that just didn't seem right. If only we had an extension until tomorrow to clear things up with the bank. Then another crazy thing happened. Extension and wish granted. We could sleep and clear our minds... at least for the night. :-)