Dare I Hope?

The first time I walked into a Jewish synagogue and opened a prayer book, I saw this: "Pray as if everything depended on God; act as if everything depended on you." This is a running theme throughout Judaism, and something I love about this belief system. There is no "let go and let God" mentality. Yes, trust God and continue communicating with God, but don't use that as a reason for inertia.

Anyway, I thought about this last night after leaving a voicemail for the realtor about the Merrick house. We had been playing a bit of voicemail tag in my efforts to make an offer. Nicole's mom asked yesterday if we were going to make an offer, and I told her that I was trying to reach the person but that I was hesitant. She asked if I didn't think it was right for us, and said that if we're set on Floral Park, we shouldn't settle. I said that we're not at all set on Floral Park, especially since we haven't seen anything else decent there in our price range. I said that we had LOVED the Merrick house and were 100% confident in making an offer before we ever saw Tyson, so it wasn't about Merrick not being right for us; it was about not being able to let Tyson go. It's THE ONE. Then I told her that I had this slight fear that we would start to go through with Merrick, be caught up in the process, and find out the offer on Tyson had fallen through and we would have had a chance after all. Nicole's mom asked if I would feel better if she called John the realtor back to confirm that the offer was accepted, that it's going through, and that it's a dead deal before I call back the Merrick realtor. I said YES, please, that would make me feel much better. At least I would know we'd done everything we could and it was out of our hands.

So she called John back and upped our offer a little bit, to just above the other offer. (We shouldn't even know what the other offer is, technically, but apparently John knows the owner and has more information than he should.) We also reapplied online for a new preapproval as soon as we got home from work, and we were granted it. So he said we may actually have a good shot at this. But the catch is - I think he told them we could put 20% down, which we definitely can't. We can do 10%, and even at that would have to borrow some from Nicole's parents for closing costs. (They don't just have it - they would take out a small loan and we would pay it back with interest.) Would this be a dealbreaker if John corrects that misinformation for the owner? I don't know. It doesn't make sense to me that it would, because as long as we're approved for the mortgage, the owner still gets her money. If anyone should be worried about it, it should be the bank, and they already take care of that by slapping you with PMI.

I have no clue whether this will work out for us. There could be an accepted offer already. The homeowner could tell the other person that there's a higher offer and ask us both to give our best (which we've already done!). I'm nowhere close to confident about this. But I'm relieved to be back in the game. If it doesn't happen, I'll know it wasn't because I didn't take action or because I gave up as soon as I heard there was already an offer. After that, it's out of my hands.