No Update- From Vegas Jenn

I started to title this post "The Waiting Game" but unfortunately I already had one titled that. There seems to be a recurring theme here, huh?

We are still waiting to find out if we are going to get accepted on the bank owned property we wrote an offer on. We wrote the offer on Tuesday, one week ago from yesterday. We heard back on Monday night that they wanted our "highest and best" offer.

We bumped up our sales price and dropped the request for seller concessions. We wrote another nice letter to the asset manager, likely which did not get sent to the asset manager at all. And we hoped that it would be enough to convince them that we were most deserving of this home.

Today our realtor called and let us know that since this is a FNMA owned home there is a closing cost worksheet that needed to be filled out. I wasn't really sure 1) why this needed to be completed when we asked for no closing costs and 2) why they didn't just ask us all to do this at the same time that we sent back our highest and best offers?

Instead they gave all of us until the end of the day today to complete our worksheets and resubmit to the listing agent. That means they will send them to the bank tomorrow, and maybe the bank will have them reviewed in time to let us all know before the weekend which lucky couple will win the contract to the dream home. I really am hoping it will be us.

See, we want nothing more than to put all of this behind us. We want closure. We want to KNOW that there is an end in sight. It's great to have a short sale (or two) going, but a short sale means nothing until the keys are in your hand. Have you heard the comment "short sales are too unpredictable"? If only I had a buck for every time I heard that throughout this process...

But little secret here- bank owned are no sure thing either. Maybe they are "sure things" in other areas of the country- maybe it is specific to my area that bank owned homes are harder to come by than a home that actually still has any equity left in it. I don't know. All I know is I cannot believe the mess that we are in.

I cannot believe that buying a home (which, incidentally is hard enough to qualify to buy anymore) is actually not as easy as going out, looking at a home, and making an offer. The process goes a little like this:

Go out. Look at a home. Fall in love with it. Submit an offer. Wait for it... Wait for it... You get nothing. Move on. Shake it off. Find another. Fall even more in love with it than the last. Build hope that it will come through. Submit a more aggressive offer. Wait for it... Wait for it... Rejection. Find another home. Repeat. And continue repeating until you either find a home that will "just do" or you give up.

So far we aren't at the "anything will do" point, but it is scary to think how dangerously close we are. If you want to know, I will be blunt. If I had any idea how this whole thing was going to play out I absolutely would not have done it. We are conservative people by nature. We try hard to make sound financial choices and to make wise decisions when it comes to not moving too quickly or acting irrationally. Some might say that is a fault- considering we have probably made half the return of what we really should be making on our investments.

The other day I was asking myself, why did I do this again? It took only half a second for me to remember. I did all of this for my children. I did this for their safety. I did this to make sure that I could always provide a safe place for them to play- both inside the house and out. I guess that's all the motivation we need to get us through this. It really is true- you will do anything for your kids.