Finding the Right House - Part IX: The Offer & The Contract

The day was Monday November 8th. I arrived at work and began my day. At 9:30am we left to head to Mary's office in Libertyville. After waiting a few minutes for Mary to show up we headed into the office. We sat in a conference room and she went through the contract and filled in the blanks. The offer price on the contract was $190,000, the closing date was set to 01/31/05 and the mortgage contigency date was set to 12/20/04.

A few hours later came the negoation. We weren't going to get them to come down much. Getting the sellers to come down anything was just a bonus as far as I was concerned.

Mary suggested that we offer $190,000 with the contract. It was lower than I figured a first offer should be but she's the one who does this every day... I defered to her. My goal was to see if we could get the price down to $200,000.

It wasn't more than a couple hours later that we had our first counter offer... $201,900 with no Fridge or Washer & Dryer.

We countered with $193,000 and they returned a "final offer" of $199,900 with Fridge & Washer & Dryer.

With that, I called Valerie to confer. At 6:29pm we agreed to accept that price & they accepted our offer.

Later that night we had to initial the changes made to the contract. The house was ours. The hard part was done... or so we thought...

Back to Part VIII --- On to Part X