Sunday, April 6, 2008

We got half of our Earnest Money Back...what to do?

I don't want to go into this long drawn out story...so I will keep this a short and simple post. Before we bought the house we are in...we put down $1000 earnest money on a house we intended to buy...not this one. Once we recieved the Home Inspection...we withdrew because the cost repair contingency was $3K. The house had over $35K worth of damage no problem. We were told by our realtor we would get our Earnest Money back without issue. Not the case...so both parties (avoiding a REALLY long post here) were stubborn (yep...we being one of the parties)...neither of us would release the money. Nearly two years later...we finally (both parties) just agreed to split it in half (we hate this, because we deserved the entire amount but oh well).

So the good news is we have $500 to spend we didn't know we would ever see again. We are going to apply it to our Lowe's Card bill to pay it almost off...so we can take advantage of their next promotion (starting on April 10th) of another 12 months no interest/payment. We will be having hardwood floors installed in our Kitchen! I am sooo excited! I will have to take before and after photos to share. The detailer will come out to give an estimate sometime this week. We estimate the total cost to be around $2000. If so, we know to divide by 12 and that is our new monthly payment. :-) Yep, it's worth it for me. I do NOT like my current floor as it is near impossible to clean. The worst floor I have ever had to try to keep clean in my life. :-)


We only buy from Lowe's with this kind of deal with their card. We DO pay it off by the end of the 12 months...so it is same as cash. WATCH OUT if you do this and make sure you budget out a monthly payment that you make yourself pay. They won't make you pay in that 12 months. The idea of course...and then hit you with the back interest you accrued. It works for us though because we are disciplined with this. We bought our Stainless Steel (not so stain-less) Fridge this way and paid it off...and now getting ready to pay off the porch swing, son's swing, etc...with this $500! Money well spent.

1 comment:

Tim said...

That stinks that you ended up losing half of your earnest money. I've always been told that its near impossible to lose your earnest money if you back out of a sales contract for legitimate reasons (home inspections being one of them). I guess this is one of those cased where the good guys get screwed though.

Tim
TheMoneyKings.com