Another House Update

Well, here's the latest in the continuing saga.... Yesterday, our realtor was finally able to contact the seller's agent, who had finally met with the owner of the house. They had a "small counter" to our offer. Apparently, this is a standard for a house in foreclosure, but the counter was that the house would remain on the market and the seller could accept any other offers until we are approved by the bank. Our initial reaction was anger. If they want a better offer, then they should reject our offer and raise the asking price! But as we talked about it, this is the condition we've been operating under already. We put it our offer almost two weeks ago, and the house has remained on the market but no other offers have come in (as far as we know, anyway). Our realtor said that he's seen the bank take anywhere from three days to three weeks to approve a buyer. While we're okay with the house remaining on the market (as I said, that's the way things are now), we want a deadline. We can't wait indefinitely for the bank to make a decision. We need to start packing, to give our "landlords" (my parents-in-law) notice that we're moving, etc. We went to see the house again last night and agreed that we are still very interested in it. So we signed the counter but put an exiparation date on our offer of Wednesday, February 18 at 1:00 p.m. We'll continue waiting and see what happens! We figure that if the bank still hasn't approved us by next Wednesday, we'll leave our offer on the table but will resume looking at houses to see if we can find something else that we like. Maybe we'll be approved before we find something else. Or maybe we'll find another house and will withdraw our offer on this house. So, to make a long story short (too late!), the waiting continues....