Sometimes You Need to Know When to Walk Away

In my last blog post, I shared how my wife and I had gone under contract on what we thought would be our home for a long time. Well, yesterday we had to make the difficult decision to walk away from the deal.

The funny thing is, neither of us are that broken up about it.

After having looked at a number of houses, we came to the conclusion that we probably wouldn’t find a nicer home in our price range that was in this close proximity to work, family, etc. So our decision to make an offer was based purely on logistics and reason, rather than on an emotional connection. The situation surrounding our decision aside, I don’t think either of us were IN LOVE with this particular house, so that definitely makes the decision a little but easier to swallow.

The home inspection uncovered quite a number of things that gave us pause but after getting the opinions of a few specialists, I thought for sure that we’d be able to work out a deal. But once we replied with our requested repairs, we found ourselves waiting…and waiting…for a response.

Now, this home was a flip (purchased on the cheap, renovated, and put back on the market to turn a profit), so the sellers had no connection to the home whatsoever, and the fact that we had not really connected on that intangible level to the house made the whole transaction feel a little off. In my experience, negotiations rarely take as long as the time allotted because people want closure and do not want the process to drag on. For some reason, the fact that we were not hearing back quickly made us anxious. We had really tried to be reasonable in our requests and the listing agent even assured me that the number one item on our list would most likely be handled without question, since it is a common hazard in older homes and not worth ignoring.

During the waiting period, my wife and I had started to become okay with all of the other items on our list not getting done as long as Priority #1 was handled.
Yesterday, when the agent called back to give us an update (not an official response), we were shocked that there was even a question as to whether this particular issue was a deal breaker. In reality, it was the only deal breaker. The sellers were willing to fix all of the smaller items but not the one that really mattered to us. Unfortunately, this conversation, coupled with the fears and anxiety we had already been wrestling with led us to conclude that this home was not the one for us.

We felt that if this home had been completely renovated yet this particular item had been ignored, we couldn’t reasonably assume that other items would not crop up in the future due to being overlooked.

So, I made the phone call to terminate our agreement and effectively reset our home search.

We spent over $700 on the various inspections with nothing to show for it. But as I said before, we actually feel better than we did when we were under contract. I had thought that my lack of emotional connection was merely because I work in real estate now and that it is more business than personal for me. But as it turns out I believe that my gut was telling me something and I will be sure to listen more attentively the next time around.

Because sometimes you just need to know when to walk away.