Pin It Now!
Remember the big
announcement last month?
Erase it from your memory.
That's right, we didn't get the house. The first time we felt like we might not get the house was the day of the inspection. The two big problems that popped up were big ones. It turns out that the roof was older than we were told. A lot older. The inspector guessed that it was 20-25 years old (we were told it was five).
Not only that, it was also leaking.
Not only was it leaking, but there was a
bucket in the
attic to catch the water.
I was pretty bummed out when Steve the inspector told me about the roof. I didn't think that things could get any worse. Of course, it's when you have this thought that things do, in fact, get worse.
In the basement, Steve looked at the furnace for a long time. It was from the late 80's. You hear of older furnaces working just fine, but the way Steve talked about this one, I knew that wasn't the case. It turns out that the heat exchange was cracked, which meant the furnace was done. So done that there was a major risk of carbon monoxide leaking from it when turned on.
I called Michael with the bad news. We agreed that we were not going to pay for either of the pricey repairs. I called our realtor to let her know of the findings. She told me what we needed to do from there. We had three business days to ask the seller to make the appropriate repairs.
Wednesday afternoon, I met with our realtor and submitted our quotes and requests. By this point, Michael and I weren't feeling as good about the house as we had before the inspection. Not only did the house need more work than we expected, but we began to question whether or not we wanted to continue living in the town the house is located in.
By Thursday night, we wanted out. Michael called our realtor and let her know. She told him that the seller didn't seem eager to replace the roof, so that may be our way out. All we could do was wait until Monday afternoon.
Monday afternoon, we both heard from the realtor. The seller had chosen not to make either repair and asked us to purchase the house as-is. If we hadn't already decided we didn't want the house, we would have been upset. Instead, we've been giving a lot of thought about moving to a new city. When we moved here, I wasn't finished with school. I am eager to get back to school. Not getting this house feels like a sign that we need to go someplace where I can start classes again.
A few days ago when we were first talking about not buying the house, I was incredibly upset. I really wanted to delete the posts with all of the photos. I have since changed my mind. I am at peace with the fact that we are going to continue to rent for who knows how long. It may be a buyer's market, but I think we're going to wait until the economy perks back up before making any huge purchases.
