The buyers of our house hired an inspector to come look at our house. This is a common practice here in Texas as well as other areas in the U.S. We did the same thing when we purchased this house and the inspection on the house we’re buying was done this week as well.

The purpose of the inspection is to make the buyer aware of any problems or potential problems with the house. The buyer can then decide if they want the seller to take care of anything off the inspection report, buy the house as is, or back out of the purchase.

Our house is 23 years old and while we’ve done a lot of work on the house, we knew the inspection would likely find issues. We also expected the buyer would ask us to do some of the things the inspector found. Fortunately, the inspector didn’t find any major problems and a couple of the things found are questionable. For example, we were asked to replace the water heater because the inspector felt it was at the end of it’s life. The inspector didn’t know we had a plumber out last month who inspected the water heater and didn’t have a concern about it. However, the buyer decided we should be given a long list of items to fix and we weren’t expecting that. For a matter-of-fact, the list was so long and so nit picky, our realtor was “MAD.” She could not believe the buyer’s realtor would be willing to send a seller such a long list of things to do.

We understand that not all buyers want to move into a home that is going to cost them money the moment they move in. We certainly don’t, yet at the same time we understand that making our monthly mortgage payment is only a portion of the money it costs to own a home. Part of the agreement made in selling our home was that we would spend up to $500 providing a home warranty to the buyer. This provides the buyer an extra layer of protection for the first year of ownership. However, this buyer had already made some not-so-common requests. At least here, leaving a refrigerator is not the norm and we were asked to leave the refrigerator. Honestly, that request wasn’t a huge deal as we have a second refrigerator we can use while we wait on the delivery of a new one. But, we were also asked to leave our washer and dryer. That request was a surprise and we had to spend some time discussing and considering that offer. Eventually we agreed to leave it knowing we would be spending additional money that we hadn’t planned to spend. As such, having the buyer give us such a long list of items off the inspector’s list was totally unexpected and balsy.

After going thru everything with our realtor, we responded with a shorter list of the things we’re willing to take care of and last night we got a response from the buyer agreeing to our list. That tells us that the buyer really wants the house and tomorrow is the end of the option period, so our house will soon move from to pending sale. That will allow us to breathe a little more freely while we tackle the list of asks from the buyer.

We also received a list of items from the inspection on the house we’re buying. We have requested two items from the list be taken care of by the seller and will hopefully get a response this weekend as the option period on our new home is almost over as well.

So, things are moving forward and I can honestly say that I would avoid ever going thru the process of selling and buying a house at the same time. I love looking at houses, but the pressure to find a house after accepting an offer on the sell of our house took away some of the fun for me.

I’m so thankful for our realtor. She was great to work with when we bought this house and has been great to work with again. Granted, she may be going home to rant and rave over my craziness, but she has been the calm in all of this.

Hopefully my next post will be pictures of our new home, so come back soon.