Waiting on Old Guide Rd.

Okay, so here’s the “sitch.” At the end of July, our family will be officially homeless. Potentially. How is this possible? Can it be stopped? Well, here’s the “sitch” in more detail, if you don’t mind me venting just a little bit. Hey, other people vent…why can’t I?

Way back in March, our real estate agent, we’ll call him Sean (well that is actually his name), showed us a great property that had just come on the market. It was a great old 4 bedroom farm house on 3 acres just a few miles south of Lynden. Perfect! And the best part…we could afford it. The catch, it was a short sale property nearing foreclosure. That didn’t matter much to us at the time except for the fact that It was neglected for years, smelled funny, was pretty trashed, broken pipes, shingles missing…let’s just say, the place was in desperate need of love. Almost instantly, Dave’s eyes glazed over, his palms began to sweat, his heart raced. Yep, he was in love! We immediately made an offer on the place, then waited. We waited more than 2 weeks to hear back from the seller, but finally they accepted our offer and signed the contract. Hooray, sale pending! We went out to dinner to celebrate.

Now comes the frustrating part. Here we are 13 weeks later, still waiting! Still waiting for the seller’s bank to approve our offer. I’ll give you a quick “short sale 101,” once the seller accepts an offer, it then goes to the sellers creditor (the bank) for final approval. Because short sales are normally foreclosures, the bank will take a loss on the deal (aka the reason Dave and I could afford this property). So, the bank has to decide if they like our offer and are willing to lose the difference between what the seller owes and what we are willing to pay. Some short sales get approval in 8-10 weeks, but what I didn’t know until today is that a lot of short sales take “forever” to get bank approval because until the bank approves our offer, the house is an asset to them. Once the bank gives us the green light to move forward with the purchase, it becomes a loss for the company (at least on paper). Many short sales just sit on a desk for weeks and weeks until the buyer finally gives up.

My question…why do agents list short sales? Seriously, I want to know! Is it so that they can watch an innocent and in many ways ignorant family get excited and emotional invested in a “home” (I mean to the point of doing the necessary inspections, lining up a contractor to fix the stuff needs to be fixed quickly before moving in and driving by the house weekly just to visit it)? That is just sick…and probably not the case at all.

Okay, that was me venting. I know… pathetic, right? I have been struggling to be patient for weeks, trying not to worry, even as the end of our rental lease is approaching. I cling to Acts 17: 24-28, that says God knows where we are going to live and Jer: 29:11 that he has a plan for us, but more often than not, my human-ness get the better of me and I slip again into the pit of worry. We have a few weeks left to wait before we have to let go of the “Old Guide Rd. Dream.” A few more weeks of waiting. As the weeds grow up even taller than me around the house that might be ours, I pray for encouragement and the patience to wait and the strength to move ahead when it is time…in whatever direction God leads.

Then, we’ll go out to dinner to celebrate.