Just to be on the safe side, while my offer for my first choice was being evaluated by the current owners, I went looking at other houses. If for some reason, they didn't like my offer and just rejected it out of hand. That way, I would have something to fall back on. My Plan B.
My realtor and I headed out Saturday. We saw eight houses, a couple of which I thought would work. Nothing I liked better than the house on which I had an offer. But some that would work well as a Plan B. Some that probably would have been fine if I hadn't ever seen the one on which I had the offer. And a couple of that wouldn't work at all, of course. But it was good to have options.
On Sunday, I planned to go out with one of my friends to see some of these Plan B houses again. In the meantime, I had gotten some new listings from the searches I had put together. I included two of those houses in the plans with my friend because they seemed to be of interest.
My friend and I headed out. We started with the house on which I had an offer. She agreed that it was a lovely house. There were some other people looking at it, which made me nervous. I really like this house!
We went to all the other houses. A couple we didn't actually go into. The new listing in Reston, for example, wasn't actually having an open house. The two listings in Fairfax across the street from each other weren't an option because there was no parking available - one of the things I didn't like about that neighborhood when my realtor and I had been there on Saturday. We ended with a new listing in Fairfax.
Wow! What a house! The floor plan for the main and lower floors is identical to that of a friend's house. Which I have loved ever since I saw it. Her house has more floors - two above the main floor. This one only has one more floor with 3 bedrooms and 2 baths (there are 2 half baths too - one by the entrance and one downstairs). And so it's smaller than the one on which I have an offer - which is four bedrooms and 3.5 baths. Which actually may be a good thing. It's also cheaper. Which actually may be a good thing. And suddenly, Plan B became a serious option.
The past couple of days have been very stressful. I still haven't heard about the home inspection on my current home. So I don't know what impact that might have on the offer for this house. But I did get a counter on the house I want to move into. And it wasn't a bad counter. So in thinking about responding to the counter, I asked my realtor to see if the owners would be willing to let me do back-to-back settlements. So that I could do conventional financing. And when she called, their realtor said the owners were nervous about my FHA financing. Which I don't get since it's actually on me, not them. But apparently FHA could make the appraisal tougher. Which is going to be a little bit of a challenge anyway. So my realtor said that I could do conventional financing if we could do back-to-back settlements. Which was what I wanted. And she didn't have to bring it up. So now their realtor is going to them to ask that question.
And I'm rethinking my offer. My Plan B may become Plan A.
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