By Sarah Stiebritz
When I first entered into this journey of buying my own place, never did I think it was going to be this stressful. In my last post I talked about seeing dozens of places and just waiting for the perfect place to come along. Well, I finally found the perfect condo and I was super excited about it, but of course, something went wrong. Let me give you the run down:
April 23rd 2015– After work I met up with my dad and my son to go look at two places. The first place was the one I fell in love with. It was an upstairs unit which at first I was unsure about but I loved it! The kitchen was nicely updated and the bedrooms where a great size. It was in a safe neighborhood with a lot of kids which I really liked because I have a 2-year old son. There was great amount of closet space and the bathroom was so nice! It was listing price was well within my budget and the HOA fee for the complex included heat and hot water! It was the perfect place in my eyes and I made my offer that night. I offered them 12% below what they listed it for.
April 24th 2015– While on my lunch break at work my real estate agent called me and told me the woman only wants to cut the price by 8%. I though that was still a good deal so I said okay. They accepted the revised offer! I was so excited and couldn’t wait to get this whole process started!
April 26th 2015– The next step in the process was to get a home inspection. When buying a condo you don’t need to get the home inspected by a certified home inspector so I just had my dad inspect the place for me because he has a great eye for things like that. So we inspect the condo, found some minor things to be fixed but nothing that would stop me from buying it. We submitted everything we found to my real estate agent who gave it to the seller’s agent and everything was squared away within the week.
April 30th 2015– This is when everything started to fall apart. The next step to the process was getting a lawyer. My mom went away to London this week and since she was co-signing for me I wasn’t going to hire a lawyer without her approval. Well, this is when I learned that my real estate agent and my mortgage broker were really just after the money (in my opinion.) They would not stop hounding me! Day in and day out, calls, emails, text messages asking me about the lawyer when I had already told them the situation. My real estate agent kept threatening me that the sellers were going give the place to someone else because they were still showing it. Meanwhile, she told me that once we inspected it they were going to take it off the market, which clearly was a lie!
May 9th 2015– My mom returned from London and we officially hired a lawyer whom we found through my dad’s friend. Now I was thinking we finally have the ball rolling again and we are almost done. Little did I know what was ahead.
May 14th 2015– After sending the mortgage broker all the stuff he needed (pay stubs etc.) he came back and told us that my mom could not co-sign for me. So, the mortgage broker said that we could possibly use my dad so he was going to work on that.
May 29th 2015– Yes it took two weeks to figure out if my dad could co-sign for me and it turns out he could not. I was so upset and disappointed to the point of tears. But I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.
Now, I never heard from my real estate agent again and I had to find out through my lawyer that the sellers of the condo accepted another offer A MONTH AGO! My real estate agent must have known and said NOTHING to me! I am beyond upset at her and will never recommend her to anyone. I tried asking my mortgage broker if there was any way I could buy something without a co-signer. I asked him if I bought a fixer upper which was super cheap if could I get a loan on my own and his response was “Sarah, it is not going to work. Thanks.” and that was it.
Overall, this was a long process that ended up in me getting nothing which is beyond upsetting, I learned not to get my hopes up because in the end it might not work out. Now, I am considering renting a place and have two appointments to look at places. I am also thinking of doing a rent with the option to buy on a townhouse that is close to my parents. I will let you know in my next post if any of it works out for me!
Sarah Stiebritz is a young single mom living in upstate New York and looking for her first condo to move in with her young son, Julian. Follow Sarah on her YouTube channel for the latest news on the condo hunt.
I don’t understand why the buyer didn’t do a pre-qualification with a mortgage broker. You don’t know if a condo is “within your budget” until you’ve done the pre-qualification. This seems less about a deal “falling through” and more about the buyer not understanding the process and, yes, being leaf astray by brokers who should have explained the need for investigating finances