We make Another Offer On A House

                                       Thursday 7/10/2014

When we first arrived in Petoskey, we started looking for bikes. We decided after all these years we should buy some since our campground here in Petoskey sits next to a bike trail and Gulf State Park in Gulf Shores, AL where we winter sit on a bike trail. Joe started by looking at Craig's List, but nothing seemed to be available. Then we hit several bike shops in the area. In the end we found, we could save money if we ordered them verses buying what they had in stock. The only problem is Joe had to wait 4 weeks for his and I am still waiting for mine. Both of our bikes got put on back ordered after putting the order in, making even a week longer then originally planned. This is a picture I took of Joe before he took off for a 40 minute bike ride without me.

We didn't get in to revisit this home until 3 days after the 4th of July weekend because it had rained, and we really didn't want to look around the house in the rain. This is a view from across the street on the lake shore property.

I really liked this house when we went through it the first time, but Joe had his eyes set on the grey house I blogged about previously. With the grey house gone, this was our next choice because the asking price was $375,000.

It does sit across the street from Lake Charlevoix, so this makes the price lower then the grey house.

View from the front porch of this house. This and the grey house both sit on the North Arm of Lake Charlevoix.

This property has 100 ft of waterfront that is about 40 ft wide from lake shore to road. After spending 2 hours of doing a more through look around, we left to look at another one of our favorites.

This house is located on the South Arm of Lake Charlevoix which is not as desirable as the North Arm of Lake Charlevoix. This is the front view of the house.

This is the lake view of the house. This house has 5 bedrooms with 2300 sq ft.

As you can see the South Arm is not as wide as the North Arm. This property has a permanent dock, which Joe loved, so he wouldn't have to put it in and take out each season.The asking price to this house is $489,000. It still had not dropped this year. After looking at it better I saw mice had been in drawers. This house has been empty for going on two years. It started at $600,000 something. We decided we needed to get this house for at least $400,000, because it needed a lot of updates. This house would be an awesome house if you could put $75,000 to $100,000 in it. We thought this one could be a great investment property.We left and went home to decide what to do. By the time we got home, we decided we should put an offer in on the brown house that sat across the street from the lake. The other one may never drop their price, and if they did, they would probably drop down to $449,000. Then we could see a bidding war starting when it reached that price, and we wouldn't get it anyway. After seeing the mice signs, I also worried about what all they had chewed, like wiring in the walls. We called our realtor and told him we wanted to come back the next day to put an offer in. Ten minutes later, he called back and told us he found out an offer had come in that day. We couldn't believe it, "Again"! He said if we wanted it, we had better come in close to the asking price or the other couple would probably get it. He said we could also just wait it out, and hope the other offer was not accepted. The seller had already countered the offer, but the other couple had not accepted it yet. Joe and I had planned to put an offer of $330,000, and be willing to come up to $350,000. We told our realtor we would wait it out. Neither one of us slept good that night. By noon the next day we were both wondering if we had made the right choice. I talked to the couple two sites down from us that have been coming to this area for 30 years. When they found out where the house was located, they told me we would get our money back someday because that area has been really growing fast. I called my daughter and she told me that the market in Gulf Shores, AL where she lives, has been going up in price this year and we are in a sellers market. Joe had said maybe we should offer $260,000, but I was concerned we would come in below the other couple and that would just push them up further and we would lose a house again. After much struggling with what to do, we finally put in an offer of $270,000, with the freezer and boat lift being left with the house. We drove the 20 miles to Boyne City that afternoon and our realtor wrote up the offer. Because the other couple still had not accepted the counter, the seller had the option to rescind his offer and accept our offer. After he rescinded the other offer, the other couple signed the offer and brought it in to their realtor, only to be told it was too late, because another offer (our's) had come in. The seller accepted our offer and we got the house. We decided we made the right moves, because it was the best priced house with lakefront property in the area we wanted to be. There was one other lakefront property on Lake Charlevoix that sold before we could see it this year for $375,000. We had not seen anything lower on Lake Charleviox.

This is the other house I really liked, but Joe didn't like it because the drive sloped down to the garage. There was broken cement on both ends at the entrance of the garage,  making Joe concerned of bad drainage and possible erosion under the garage.

This house sat up the hill from the lake, but did have deeded lakefront property with a boat dock. The  deeded  lake shore property didn't have any grassy area, and was right next to a very busy road. It is also on the North Arm of Lake Charlevoix.

This house was the newest and most modern, but was asking $449,000, which Joe thought was too high  for a property not on the lake.

All in all the property that we purchased was the best one for us because it gives us the lakefront with dock, at the best price with 1900 sq ft, in the area and town we wanted to be.

This is a map of our new summer home location. We had decided after much looking that we wanted to be in Boyne City. Boyne City is very centralized. Originally Joe really wanted to be on Torch Lake, which we found was too expensive for us. Torch Lake is about a hour away to the nearest public boat ramp, so we will be going there to boat also. Torch Lake is the largest lake south of Boyne City (Boyne City is marked in red on the map). I on the other hand wanted to be on Walloon Lake with is just 15 miles northeast of Boyne City. Walloon Lake, Torch Lake, and Elk Lake (which is just southwest of Torch Lake) are the most expensive lakes in this area. Lake Charlvoix, I think would come in 4th as most expensive in this area. I did find one house on Walloon Lake that we could afford. It is listed at $459,000, and I am sure we could have got it for probably around $410,000, because it has been on the market for a year now. Unfortunately it was only 1000 sq ft. and I felt I would rather have a larger home on Lake Charlevoix at a lower price.The advantage of being on Lake Charlevoix is you can get onto Lake Michigan if you want from this lake. Petoskey and Harbor Springs is northeast of Boyne City,  and the town of Charlevoix (not shown on this above map) is northwest of Boyne City. The largest city in the area is Traverse City which is a hour away to the southwest. The map below is enlarged to give you a better view of where Boyne City is in Michigan. The next map shows the towns of Petoskey, Harbor Springs, and Charlevoix, and East Jordon. East Jordon is on the south end of the South Arm of Lake Charlevoix.