Could it get any crazier?

We had an appointment to sign an offer on a new house today at 3pm. We show up and our agents sit us down and say they have something to discuss. Apparently someone went and talked some sense into the sellers of the first house and they are willing to give us everything we want.

Our agents were very smart and gave us lots of room to run away screaming which immediately required that we think about it all logically (even though emotionally I wanted to run away screaming). I have no idea how they know these things because my parents would have run away screaming whereas this was the perfect way to approach us.

We agreed, the sellers agreed and as of a few hours ago all of the paperwork was signed. We are still waiting on the lender's appraisal and we have promised to run away screaming if the appraisal is less than the purchase price. In the meantime though, we are somewhat hopeful that this could all be over soon and that we could have a new house in just two weeks.

Everyone warns you that buying a new house is an exercise in insanity but most of the horror stories we hear are about money grubbing agents and demanding lenders. Our agent couldn't have been nicer or a better advocate and the mortgage broker all but signed our names to make the process as easy (and as competitive price-wise) as possible. The sellers were our hurdle. They apparently have other issues beyond selling their home and had an agent who bought into all of their issues so that no one on that side was seeing quite right for a while. Supposedly that's all fixed now and we can all only hope that the lenders see it that way as well.

I do feel badly for the owners of the house we would have bought though. We met them both times we went to see the place and so they know that a couple was seriously interested in the house. Now, they will wonder what happened to us. I don't feel badly enough to turn down the deal we were looking for originally, but badly none the less.

The moral of this story is that, even in a buyers' market, buying a house is an exercise in insanity and you should always be prepared to run away screaming.