Greetings from Iowa - Part III

[Sir_Galahad]

The time had come for us to decide which of the three houses we wanted to get settled and out of the studio apartment we were staying in. It had only been 10 days but with the impending length of time we heard it would take to close, we wanted to get that process started as quickly as possible. So we had out agent take us through the three houses one more time so we could really spend some time in them and make our final decision. After doing this we decided that The Pond House would be the one we went after. The Pond House was a bit smaller in stated square footage than our place in S.C. but with the full basement (which we plan to finish), the actual usable space would be increased by about 50%. As an aside, we had done some research on the Pond House and discovered that the house had been on the market for about 18 months and the seller had lowered the asking price by 20%. Still, we had a budget to consider and submitted an offer that was 10% lower than the asking price for starters. The seller rejected our offered but did come down about 5% off the latest asking price and we accepted provided the seller would provide a home warranty. This was agreed to. Next step was to arrange for the customary inspection. Our agent had told us that he paid for the inspection so we arranged for that.

The inspection went pretty smoothly and the inspector only found about a dozen issues that needed to be addressed, many of which were simply cosmetic. We presented the list to our agent who sent it over to the seller's agent who sent it along to the seller. The seller agreed to fix most of the issues but would not repair a few others, one of which were two panels on the garage door that had been badly dented. So, again, we hemmed and hawed over this and told our agent that that was a deal breaker if the seller was not going to fix it. So, our went to the seller's agent with the news and the two of them decided that rather than let the deal fall through, they would pay for it (do you see a pattern developing here?). There were a few cosmetic issues that we would fix as well. All was agreed to so we now had to sign the papers and wait for all the title searching and clearance to close.

On the way back from the inspection, a funny (well, not so funny) thing happened. While 2 blocks from our hotel, our truck (lady G's vehicle) got rear-ended while we were sitting at a light in traffic. The youngster driving the SUV that hit us was not paying attention in the stop and go traffic and hadn't so much as hit the brakes before ramming our truck. Our truck careened into the car in front of us which careened into the car in front of it. Our truck was wiped out and deemed a total loss by the insurance company. Fortunately, nobody was seriously hurt but we sat and thought that that might have been a different story had we been in a small car. So, on top of the stress of getting the house purchased all that went with that, we now were faced with having to deal with insurance companies to replace the truck. On the positive side, I still had my vehicle to get around with but the insurance company did provide us with a rental car anyway.

Stay tuned for Part IV