The back story…
I live in a three unit property I purchased in 2007. I have lived in one unit with my two kids and now current wife ever since. Life is great! However, it was time to get our own place and keep the tri-plex as aninvestment.
We live in a good part of town and wanted to find something in our current neighborhood. A single family house came on the market around the corner from us. We watched it and talked about it for a few months. It sat on the market for about seven months before we finally decided to look at it. At the showing we found that the house was lived in, but not well taken care of. We also found out that it was being sold as a short sale. I knew from my investing that a short sale could take six to nine months or more.
They were asking $59,900 for the house. We expected to put $20K in it to bring it up to snuff. The after repair value would be around $70k, so we decided to make an offer of $49,900. We loved the location and potential of the house, so I was not afraid to pay fair market value for it. After all we would be living in it, rather than renting it out.
A week later the owners accepted our offer. Now all we needed was to wait for the bank to also accept it. So we waited… and waited… and waited. After six or seven months our realtor tried to show us other options. We just had no reason to be in a hurry. This house is exactly what we wanted and no other houses even came close. So we waited… and waited… and waited.
Move forward to one year from our initial offer. What a day! The bank accepted our offer of $49,900. We were so happy because as it turns out we would need the house after all. We would be getting married in one month and were planning on expanding our family. We needed a bigger house! Everything seemed to be moving ok. We started the closing process with our lender and our title company.
A couple weeks in I decided to check the county sheriff office for sheriff sales coming in the next month. Well what do you think I found? Apparently a few months after I made my offer on the house the current residents moved out. The house was in foreclosure this entire time and the house was now scheduled to be sold at sheriff’s auction “before” our closing date. What would that mean? No one could give me a defendant answer, so I went to the sheriff’s auction and bid on the house we were already scheduled to purchase.
At auction, I actually won the house for $45,000. $5,000 less than our short sale offer. I gave the mandatory deposit of $4,500 to the sheriff’s office that day. I called our realtor, mortgage broker and closing title company to let them know what happened. They all agreed that the sheriff sale would trump the short sale and so we proceeded to prepare for closing on the sheriff sale.
One month after winning the house at sheriff sale I was getting anxious. So I started checking around on what was going on. No one knew. They had heard nothing from the sheriff’s office about a closing. I got online and checked our county court records. I had been monitoring them off and on to follow the foreclosure process of the previous owners. I saw that there was a hearing held a couple of days after the sheriff sale. Apparently the bank that owned the note filled to “Vacate the sheriff sale”. What the ------ is that?!!! After some phone calls I found out that the bank asked the judge to cancel the sheriff sale on the grounds that it was in the process of being sold as a short sale. The judge agreed and canceled the sheriff sale! So, I contacted everyone again to let them know what happened. I guess we would now be buying the house at short sale again.
Two weeks later, still no word. I called everyone to see if they heard anything. They all said that the bank would not return their calls anymore. It looked like they were backing out. I checked the online court records again. It was true, they were backing out of my deal and they actually requested to sell the house at sheriff sale again! I had enough. Obviously the bank just did not want me to have the house. Time to move on and look for other houses!
A week ago, I went to the sheriff’s office to ask for my deposit back. After telling the deputy what happened and that I wanted my deposit back, she was perplexed. She did not understand why the bank would vacate the first sale just to put it back up to auction. She called the judge handling the case. He was mad to say the least! He was very upset that the bank had told him that the reason for requesting the vacate sale order was so that the house could be sold at short sale. He ordered another hearing for after the New Year. He wanted me present this time to discuss with the bank what is going on.
After one year and three months from our first offer, what is going on??? Who knows? I am not getting too excited, but it looks like we still may get the house!
More to come later…
