West Coast Jenn gave up on the short sales

My apologies to those that have been awaiting any news that I might provide a short sale success story. I can't believe I last posted almost sixty days ago. Six zero.

So much has happened in sixty days I don't really know where to begin. We pulled the plug on both of the short sales that we were in contract on. The first one (BofA) we had been in contract for five months and they still had not even completed a BPO. The second one (Suntrust) was relatively new in it's timeline but never really had a chance to work through to see how it would go.

We have been busy packing and working on closing our local office so that we can relocate to work from our Arizona branch. For a fleeting moment we did consider holding out to buy a short sale in Phoenix but then I remembered all the headache and disruption it has been to our lives so we passed on that option.

Originally we were going to get out to Phoenix and rent for six months or so until we could figure out the lay of the land so to speak. One crazy day we decided we were just going to buy something so that we could put this all to rest. When I say crazy I really do mean crazy- we wrote an offer on a "flip" property that we had never even seen. In a neighborhood we had never visited.

So if you want to know- we got the house. We are closing on Monday. But don't think that there is any less stress that comes with buying a flip property and let me tell you why. First of all, if it is being sold in a time period less than 90 days from when the investor took ownership you are in for all kinds of headaches. Currently VA is the only loan type that does not prohibit a flip transaction, but we are not veterants.

Fortunately for us the home was nearing the 91st day from when the seller took ownership so we waited until that day and submitted the contract right out of the gate. If we were obtaining conventional financing and the seller had listed the home at more than a 15% profit over what he purchased it for then we would have been in for even more headaches. Lucky for us we were able to qualify for FHA financing and because the home had been owned for at least 91 days we only needed to obtain one appraisal.

However the appraisal was shaky at first, and we were scared we would need to go for an appraisal review. I see very few appraisal reviews that agree with the original value, most come back with a cut to the value. We wrote the contract without an appraisal contingency so this meant that if the appraised value was substantially lower than our sales price we were still locked in to our sales price with no repercussions on the seller. Note to most average buyers out there- this is NOT, NOT, NOT a good idea. We were playing with fire. Fortunately for us we did not get burned- too bad. The value did come in $2500 lower than our sales price which means we are completely out of that cash but for all the housing problems we have had over the last seven months with trying to purchase a home we figured it was collateral damage. We were ok with that.

We are moving one week from today. Incidentally, the home does have a basement. So the house that started this whole crazy blog - you know, the one with the basement that we just had to have? Well, we still got our basement, just happened to be in another state.

Everything happens for a reason.