After the euphoria of the girls trip died down, I got to work – I needed to buy a house (and a tree laden with starfruit) in Puerto Rico.  I had to get preapproved for a loan and make an offer on the house.  Given a bank owned the home, and they had most likely had already written it off, we made a really low offer.  They did not like the offer and counter offered by reducing the asking price by $10,000.  We set a max price and were prepared to walk away if we could not come to an agreement below that price.  Well, I really did not want to walk away but it might come to that.

After three more iterations, the bank came back with its final offer.  Too high.  We provided our final offer, the max we had set.  Then we waited anxiously.  I remember my excitement when I received a text from my realtor on Sept 1st 2018 congratulating us.

We did it! OMG! We just made an offer on a home over a 1,000 miles away. Was I nuts? Along with the excitement, there was definitely apprehension.  

Because the seller was a bank, the purchasing process was simpler.  There was no uncertainty related to ownership or liens. This can be a problem in Puerto Rico as homes pass from one generation to the next without proper paperwork.

One concern was that the house was being sold “as is”.  There was an inspection by the mortgaging bank (which was also the seller) and we received a copy. No major issues.  No roof, no basement means less things that can go wrong.  Or so we thought.

Settlement was Oct 12th 2018, just seven months after I had embarked on this journey.  Pretty impressive!  I stayed on top of matters providing all the documentation as quickly as possible so as not be on the critical path.

Recall, my husband had not yet seen the house.  The girls in the family had, but the boys had not. 

What if Santosh is not happy with the house?