Good but insanely busy

Things are looking optimistic that we will sell our house. Yay! However, the last week and a half has been insanity.

Last Tuesday afternoon we got an offer on our house. Our agent wanted us to accept the offer as is, and she said she didn't think we'd get anything close to it for the next few months. Blah blah blah, her whole speech pissed me off. Then after she leaves (and she was PO'ed we had the audacity to counter the offer), we get another offer. And then on Thursday we got another offer. 3 offers in 2 days. Then you have to go through all the countering and haggling, etc. But with 3 offers, we could choose to be picky.

We sign paperwork, go through all that hoopla. We knew of some things at the old house we had to fix, so we get the process of get estimates and stuff for that. Then we deal with our real estate agent twice a day at least. She will prattle on for half an hour at a time while Julia is screaming in the background. Monday was the inspection. We get the buyer's inspection counter on Wednesday. We formulate our response while our real estate agent is annoying the heck out of us. Today was the appraisal. They are going FHA & there's extra criteria & we won't find out the results of the appraisal til Tuesday. Since there was a bidding war, there's some anxiety on the part of our agent that the house won't appraise for what it sold for. We have to fill out the title documents. We have to coordinate people to come fix things. We have to carve some time out to go steam clean the carpets in the old house and clean the old house.

Remember the part that we work full-time and have a toddler and have a buttload to do in the new house? Yeah, there's that part too.

Then I'm trying to get things going on our refinance. If we refi with Bank of America, we have to close BY March 13th in order to not have to pay for another appraisal on our new house (120 days from the last inspection on the new house). Plus they will match the rate & closing costs ING would give us. If we go with ING, we can't even APPLY until March 14 (90 days after our previous closing). Isn't that funky? So we have to close by March 14 or apply no earlier than March 14, depending on where we decide to get our loan from. I'm thinking we should just refi with BOA now.

Oh yeah, and we are working out the details on the kitchen remodel. That will be starting soon.

Don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled (beyond thrilled) that the other house will likely be sold soon. It's just all so daunting and tedious and lots of things to do without firm answers yet. Like we don't know if the buyer will accept our counter to the inspection, we don't know if the appraisal will come through to meet the FHA criteria, so we're not 100% ready to start the refinance process. But we need to close on the refi by March 13th, so that means we need to put it in high gear the moment we are almost certain the house sale will go through.

We knew going into this house swap thing that life would be quite hectic and uncertain for a considerable amount of time. But we thought the advantages outweighed the risk, and we could withstand the stress. And we can. It's just life is hairy right now with an epic to-do list, most of which there is not enough time in the day to do. You just have to set it aside and do what you can as these more urgent things come up.

As I keep learning time and time again in the home buying and home selling process: Trust your gut. Don't let your agent or the opposing side sell you up the river. You are the only one who works for your best interests.

I'm exhausted, mostly mentally. All of this will be worthwhile if the house indeed sells. Right now, though, I'm impatient and want to start tying up loose ends.