Part dos

So, our Realtor (who also happens to be our current landlord) put in an offer that was about $25k below the seller's asking price. The seller "countered" with their original asking price, plus some concessions on our part. Carrie and I were thinking "WTF?"

It turns out that the seller's agent was one of these discount brokers who was on vacation in some remote area in Oregon, and wasn't really giving them any meaningful input - we were (and still are) dealing directly with the sellers themselves. So it was up to our agents to walk the sellers through the process, and show them why our offer was a fair one. In the end, we agreed on a price that was twenty grand less than what they were asking, and our agents provided the sellers with a market analysis to back up our offer - sort of like a mini-appraisal.

Which brings me to the next hurdle that we had to get through - the appraisal itself! The sellers bought the house during the height of the Seattle housing boom about three years ago, when it was a seller's market, and it was the people who were selling the houses who were pretty much providing the appraised values for the land. Flash forward three years to our present economy, and, while there are bargains to be had, if a seller wants to sell their house without taking too much of a loss, they will have a hard time doing so (and they buyer will have a hard time getting financing) if the property does not appraise for the agreed-upon price!

*sigh* More to come.