Another House Offer- But

For the last week that we were going round and round with the house we were trying to close, we had been following another house that seemed to be too good to be true. It has been on the market for over two weeks with no contract and we couldn't imagine why it was still available. The demise of our contract with our first house made this one available to us. It is more money but is so much more move-in ready and updated.

We drove to the house with our agent at 11 AM and did a long and thorough walk-thru as the owners sat outside on the patio. We fell in love with everything about this house as far as layout, size, location and interior amenities. I will show you these photos of the house and the interior before revealing why, we believe, the house is not yet under contract.

These shots were among those that were part of the listing material:

Fantastic, right?

We knew immediately what the problem was when we entered the front door. The entire house wreaked of cigarette smoke! The owners have lived there since December, 1997, and obviously smoked during the entire time they have lived in the home. We loved the house so much that we came home and did some research on eliminating smoke odors in homes and discovered that it is possible, with lots of hard work, to eliminate the odors. Some of the information suggested that we walk away from the home, and some gave examples of successful odor removal. We decided to make an offer on the house and go forward with trying to make it work for us.

The owners have until 8 AM tomorrow to accept, reject or counter our offer. We'll let you know when we know what happens next....