Whoops! I see I haven’t posted in two weeks. I didn’t mean to let it be that long, but I’ve been busy. I’m sure you understand.
Just before we met with the Anderson’s agent who was presenting our second offer, the Johnson’s agent called to announce they were removing the contingency. Oh happy day! So now we had a full price offer, no contingencies. The Anderson’s offer wasn’t as strong as the Johnson’s, but I didn’t care – it encouraged the Johnson’s to remove the contingency. (As it turns out that wouldn’t have mattered anyway, I’ll explain below.)
The original offer(minus the contingency) was accepted, we signed the contract, and are officially in escrow. Here is what has so far happened during the escrow process:
- We have had our home inspection. The inspector found a handful of small items, but the buyers didn’t ask for any
repairs. Whew-hoo! That is unusual but more likely when your house is an excellent shape. 
- The Johnsons got a full price offer on their house, with no contingencies. Their house was on the market only 7 days! Their buyer wants to move in fast, so our closing date has already been set for 6/9. This is great news as it keeps them on track and motivated to close on time. Ironically, if we hadn’t held out for the contingency our closing date would have been the same. But you never know!
- Today the appraiser was by – we should have the results of that in a few days.
The only small glitch was I had to remind John to arrange the home inspection. According to our contract, the inspection should be done and been presented with the repairs requested 10 days after contract ratification (signing). The inspection wasn’t done til day 13. Uh-oh. So we requested an addendum. John seemed a little miffed that I asked 
for one, but you can never be too careful. In a perfect world we could do all transactions on a handshake, but in the real world we have contracts to help make sure everyone does the right thing instead.
Now we have to wait for the results of the appraisal and for the Johnson’s loan approval. Their financials were very strong, so I’m not concerned about that at all. Since there was no contingency about the appraised value of the house, that shouldn’t be an issue either. If someone is getting the maximum loan amount, not appraising high enough can kill a deal, but that really can’t happen here. The Johnsons are putting more than 1/3 down so there really is no chance their loan won’t cover their responsibility.
