What large purchase deals did you walk from and why?

[Amys1st]

I would be curious to know what you were buying whether car, house, something that is a lot of money and you walked away from the deal.
It could even be a job or relocation.

the reason-

We bid on a house several years ago and they countered and we walked. The house ended up selling for our original offer. We walked because taking another look, we found too much to do for too much money. We were glad we did after we found out the selling price! We ended up finding our home now 4 days later.

Now to the present. We are outgrowing this home or we will eventually in the next 18 mos.
We found a house that will need new owners- meaning it needs updating, work etc and we can do it. We have been going back and fourth on this house for about 5 mos now. The owner has it listed at an ungodly amount and it has sat for 9 mos. We lowballed. He keeps calling us back. We put in a final amount this week- only 5K more than our original offer. I know he will not get anymore than that or he would have gotten it already.
So that is as high as we will go. So in essence, if he dosent take this offer, we walk. We know it will be the right choice and another home would come up within the next 18 months probably dozens. So what have you walked on?

[klondikesky]

A beautiful house that was *exactly everything* we wanted. Not too big, period details, room to grow, a just right backyard with a huge porch, and a new eat-in kitchen with a big bay window overlooking the backyard. We had a contract, and were doing the inspection. Dh and I were talking with the home inspector, trying to glean anything we could (we are home maintenance dummies), when I noticed a tiny crack in the basement wall. Asked inspector about it. "Oh, doesn't look serious." Go to other side of basement. Another hairline crack. Then things got serious. Turns out the foundation need over $15k of repairs. The owners offered to fix it, but it had clearly been patched before... Dh and I were nervous about it coming up again when we wanted to sell (knew we wouldn't be there forever). So we walked.

I still miss that house...

[klondikesky]

And then the *wrong* house...

We ended up buying the *wrong* house after that. It was one of those houses that was slightly dated. But otherwise very attractive. You know, rip up the carpet for hardwoods (check), new paint in bedrooms (check), cosmetic update of kitchen inc. new appliances, floor, paint (check... um, wait a minute...). Turned out to need a $35,000-$50,000 kitchen remodel, minimum. Just to replace the appliances (evil, ancient, odd-sized built in oven and countertop range required all new cabinetry). More if I wanted more than 18" of continuous counter space (I did. This would have required knocking out walls.). And modernizing the garage doors in keeping with the style of the architecture (very distinctive carriage-style garage) was going to be $14,000.

We sold after living there for 10 months. I couldn't cope with the depressing kitchen, and we couldn't afford the remodelling (the mortgage stretched us to the limit). We actually had four offers after three days on the market (in a stable neighborhood where that just *does not* happen). The newly refinished hardwoods and paint were extremely popular with the buyers. And we broke even, the whole ordeal only cost us the expense of movers both ways.

So not exactly leaving in the middle of a deal. But it was much more traumatic, and has always been exponentially more difficult to explain...

[afishwithabike]

Walked away from a perfect 9 acre piece of property with a nice little farm house and three outbuildings. The monthly payment got scary to us and we bowed out.

[lenore80]

We walked away from an awesome old house, about 1800 square feet. It had original flooring (the small oak wooden planks-you guys know how much those cost to put in now), perfect location. Gorgeous lot with tons of trees.

The upstairs bathroom toliet was leaking, and the floor underneath it was bowing. Nothing was updated-original stove from like the 1930's, the old frigidaire fridge. Everything was old, worn, and man, did we want this house. My dad knew vaguely knew the people who owned the house, as it was a distant relative.

They wanted 90,000 for a fixer-upper. This might sound great in some areas, but we are in a buyer's market (#2 in the country for buying homes). We offered I think 70, then maybe 80. The guy wouldn't even look at the offer unless it was 85,000-and I was so disgusted by this old coot's attitude that we walked.

I think the last time I saw it listed it was for 85,000. I think he may have eventually sold it. Its a good thing too, because we would have never been able to afford the repairs on this house...and I am sure the heating bills would have been outrageous.

[vanilla]

Originally Posted by Amys1st

We found a house that will need new owners- meaning it needs updating, work etc and we can do it. We have been going back and fourth on this house for about 5 mos now. The owner has it listed at an ungodly amount and it has sat for 9 mos. We lowballed. He keeps calling us back. We put in a final amount this week- only 5K more than our original offer. I know he will not get anymore than that or he would have gotten it already.
So that is as high as we will go. So in essence, if he dosent take this offer, we walk. We know it will be the right choice and another home would come up within the next 18 months probably dozens. So what have you walked on?

I wouldn't feel bad walking away. I don't know about your specific area, but housing here in MI is pretty much a total buyer's market. I read in the paper there are twelve houses on the market for every single buyer, and people are doing crazy things to sell......I think if you're going back and forth, you must not be really confident that it's the right house for you, or that it's worth the work (correct me if I'm assuming too much)...


we made an offer on a house last summer I REALLY liked. The inspections were OK, it's an old house. The main problem was it was the nicest house in the neighborhood, and you know what that does for a house...we gave them our highest offer, and then someone offered them like 10K MORE the same day. I was a little sad. Well, these people backed out after inspections, and they called us back begging for another offer. We were all set to send one in, when that day the PERFECT house came up for sale one block over (by owner, even!) and we turned and ran, and bought the other house that day. It was a very exciting weekend So now we live here, on a nicer street, in a totally updated, insulated, etc house, which needs almost no work from us (things we want to do, not things that need to be done). And taking into consideration the huge savings on utilities, we spent less!! We are very glad things turned out the way they did.

[Amys1st]

Originally Posted by vanilla

I wouldn't feel bad walking away. I don't know about your specific area, but housing here in MI is pretty much a total buyer's market. I read in the paper there are twelve houses on the market for every single buyer, and people are doing crazy things to sell......I think if you're going back and forth, you must not be really confident that it's the right house for you, or that it's worth the work (correct me if I'm assuming too much)...
.

I do not feel bad at all walking away. I always keep large purchases to a transaction and thats it. I see so many people get emotional when buying and then they end up paying more or getting ripped off or screwed. IMO, there is always another deal to be made whether a car, house etc. But I live in a large metropolit area so it makes sense I can feel this way. The buyers market is starting to pop up here as well now that the bubble burst.

A little background:
The house went up for sale in late may/june of 2005. He had it listed about 125K over priced for what he was selling. He claimed it appraised at 480K. A house like this would sell in this market about 350-375K. The house needs new owners. If he would have emptied it out, torn down the wallpaper, and refinished the floors he could fetch maybe 399K which is what it is at now. But what is out there for 399 in our neighborhood- why would anyone buy this house. so now fast forward 8 plus months to today the house sits. We looked at it around labor day last fall and made an offer. The agent called us every 2-3 weeks until the first of the year. Since the house sat, its obvious that he is asking too much and our offer was right about right after all. We were in there last week and there was about 25 agent cards on the counter. All of the realtors in our town have seen the listing, many people have been thru along with about a 1/2 dozen more houses that are a better value what he is up against. There have been no other offers on the house either.

Our feeling is if we pay his inflated price, we could be potentially stuck with a house that will not rise in value over the next few years and then we have a loan on a house that may not be worth what we thought. We plan on staying in our next house long term but for some reason we had to sell- we should be able to get our return on the investment plus whatever value increase. Our house has almost tripled in value over 9 years because of the work we did to it and the housing increase. But what we would ask is what this style house is getting now. No need to get greedy or wait for someone to cough up the dough when they could get our house somewhere else.

So the house we would like to have sits and if he calls us back, we get it at our price and if not, oh well- something else will come along eventually but until then we will live with our low mortgage and all done house- for at least 18 mos or so.

[lenore80]

Originally Posted by vanilla

I wouldn't feel bad walking away. I don't know about your specific area, but housing here in MI is pretty much a total buyer's market.

The house I posted about $90,000 for a fixer-upper is in MI.

[lenore80]

Originally Posted by vanilla

We were all set to send one in, when that day the PERFECT house came up for sale one block over (by owner, even!) and we turned and ran, and bought the other house that day. It was a very exciting weekend

Our current house went on the market, we viewed it, and put in a purchase agreement. We had 3 agents call our agents wanting to know if we were really going to purchase the house. We are from MI, and like you said, there are so many houses that are for sale that I can't believe so many people called on this one.

To the OP, the day you walk into "your house" you will know. I walked into my living room, was there less than 2 minutes, and said "I want this house". The inspection was ok (we need roof vents, pour a driveway, etc). We placed bids on 4 houses before this, and this one felt RIGHT. I can't believe the type of houses we placed agreements on until something fell through.

[lenore80]

Originally Posted by Amys1st

The house went up for sale in late may/june of 2005. He had it listed about 125K over priced for what he was selling. He claimed it appraised at 480K. A house like this would sell in this market about 350-375K. The house needs new owners.

It sounds like you have an emotional seller! The type of person who thinks since its his house, lived there for many years, he deserves so much money for it. : How frustrating.

[wednesday]

We backed out on a contract for a new home where the builder was just being really high-pressure and the situation just didn't feel right. We had seen the house and walked through it when it was under construction. Really liked the house and the property. Met the builder and we were talking details, but we wanted to look into our financing options before signing anything. He really put a lot of pressure on the idea that he had to order the appliances and cabinets and carpet THAT DAY and if we signed right away then we could pick out exactly what we wanted, instead of getting whatever he picked. He also offered us this deal where if we used his lender, he would pay our closing costs. We felt kind of rushed and uneasy about it, but at the same time we wanted the deals he was offering. So we signed.

Then his lender calls us the next day and tells us our credit is so bad that he can only offer us like 13% or something totally insanely high like that. (And our credit was not "bad", it was like in the high 600s if I recall correctly.) At that point we still could have gotten our own lender at better rates but the whole runaround of "free closing costs" that turned out to be a technique to insult us and pressure us into a criminally high interest rate really put us off the entire transaction. So we backed out, and it turned out to be a good decision. We ended up deciding to move across the state only a year later to live closer to family. If we had bought that house we would have had a hard time moving on when we wanted to.

Since then, even though our credit score really hadn't changed, we bought a house in our new town at less than HALF the interest rate those crooks offered us.