Counter offer is in...

It's been about a week since my last post - thanks Nan for the Facebook nudge to remind me to stay on top of this bad cat. ;) Since then, Jake completed the long anticipated Plymouth High School / Lakeshore Tech College Science and Tech Center Grand Opening. The event was uber impressive, with over 500 attendees from the community, local businesses, sponsors, state representatives, LTC execs, and I'm sure a slew of other important people that I'm neglecting to mention. But this isn't my acceptance / thank you speech, so I'll just leave it at that and hope the detail I've provided has served its purpose.

I was so proud of Jake and all the work he did to get make the Grand Opening a success. He's been working non-stop to help with this renovation since he was hired back in 2010, and despite my medical emergency, right at the start of his new career with PHS, he continued on while supporting me and helping me through recovery. It's been a long haul, and next on the agenda for the Sherman's is buying a house so that poor Jake can join us for dinner more than once a week and see Layla off to school in the a.m.'s.

With that said, we're now in the thick of it with the home buying process and have submitted an offer on a home in Greenbush (just outside of Plymouth). The seller has provided her counter offer, and we will be countering that offer tomorrow.

If you ask me, home offers should be handled like mediation - schedule a time where seller and buyer are available, get them into the same office where a mediator walks back and forth from the room the sellers are in to the room the owners are in, with offers and counter offers. I suppose, process as it stands today allows both parties ample time to "mull over" offers, but I'd rather hammer it all out in one day and call it done. The waiting game is excruciating and the response time that's given out of courtesy for people to review and contemplate offers only makes people second guess the numbers (depending on how you look at it, I suppose that could be a good or a bad thing).

In any event, the agency, coincidentally who employs both our buyer's agent and the selling agent (the owner of the agency) is working their tail off to make us all come to an agreement and close the deal. I'm thankful for that, and am now just hoping and praying that all our stars align over the next few days to make this happen.

If you have time, say a little prayer for us... Specifically, here's what we need to happen:

1) Seller to accept our latest counter offer
2) Seller to be on board with closing date of June
3) Financing to be approved (it pretty much is already, we just need to finalize and keep it within reason so the bank doesn't throw more money than we can afford at us)
4) Refinance on existing home to be approved (the same bank is working on a refi for us, to lower our payment which will help with #5)
5) Find a renter for our Hartford home (if our refi comes through, we'll be able to list the house at a more affordable monthly rent that might help us bring renters in)

So yeah, just a few important items that all need to fall perfectly into please. Need I explain why we need some prayers? ;)