SUNDAY: We're Open for Business

We haven't had an Open House in a while. We were having them every Sunday through the fall but we got burned out. It didn't seem to be working and it was a lot of effort and disruption in our lives. The reason we decided to have one yesterday is because we haven't yet had one since we dropped the price and we would like to get a better offer to submit to the bank.

All the rules are different when it comes to short sales. We are actually allowed to continue accepting offers while the bank reviews our packet. They'll take the best offer submitted. The cleanest and strongest. This means, best credit, most money down, etc. Our current offer is low and they're asking for a lot more than usual back in closing costs. This might deter our lender. And we're doing everything in our power to avoid foreclosure.

We cleaned from 8AM to 11AM non-stop. The house looked amazing when we were finished. Bob was on his hands and knees polishing the hard wood floors. We cleaned places we hadn't seen in a long time.

It was a great day for the views too. So clear you could see the snow-capped mountains in the distance. The house was stepping it up, it seemed.

The Open House went well. 25 people came through. We've had more on previous Open Houses, but in this market that is still solid. According to our Realtor, there was a lot of interest and people were very impressed. This usually the case, so it doesn't really mean anything and doesn't always translate into an offer. But we're hoping it will. Everyone knows the situation. It's a short sale. The bank is already reviewing one offer, so if you really want the house, you need to submit a good, clean offer.

Now it's Monday. It's good to wake up to a clean house.

Update: Short Does Not Mean Fast

SHORT SALE = to sell your house for less than it is worth.

We are in a "short sale" situation at the moment. We have submitted the SHORT offer (short in terms of money) to the bank with our Short Sale Packet for approval.

SHORT SALE PACKET = Letter of hardship, last two months of pay stubs, 2 most recent bank statements and some other stuff

The bank is in the process of reviewing the packet and the offer. This can take up to two months, but things are moving faster in our situation. This is due to the fact that I managed to establish contact with the Office of the President at Countrywide. Things move a bit faster in that office.

The next step is the appraisal. The bank has already contacted us to let us know that will be happening. In a short sale situation you are allowed to submit more than one offer and the lender will go with the highest one. This means that we are still showing the house.

The daily cleaning frenzy continues. I've been so busy lately and Bob has really been picking up my slack in the cleaning department. (Thanks, honey!)

We had a showing yesterday and we have another today.

Sunday we're doing an open house.

While we would love to get a higher offer and one a bit more solid, we're hoping the bank will move on the submitted short sale offer and just accept it. Because at this point, it doesn't really matter to us what the sale price is (except that we really don't want to contribute to declining housing values in our neighborhood) because we're losing our full investment in the house anyway.

That's the long and the short of it.