We bought a house!

Yup, we bought a house. It is the same one I wrote about several posts back when we were in the process of negotiating and not sure how it was going to turn out. It was quite a long and involved negotiation, involving five different parties, some of whom threatened to back out at different points, all of whom had different levels of interest and reasons for selling, and one of whom was living in the house and we had to displace.

That last one was an aunt who owned the piece of land on the north side (see birds-eye view and explanation here), and was currently occupying other parts of the house as well, along with her daughter, grandson and another friend. Their bathroom was kind of like an outhouse in the middle of our patio, and so if they moved only to their side, they’d have no bathroom. Therefore, to move the deal along, we offered to build a new bathroom for her on her side, and also fronted the money for building a new room and roof for her (which was then taken out of the amount we paid her brother and niece – two of the other owners).

And that was only a small part of all the detailed negotiations, which my dear husband Elder took charge of. He is the one who made this deal happen, going back and forth between each party over the course of the past few weeks and months, always trying to keep the negotiations moving.

The first step - which was quite an accomplishment in of itself - was getting everyone to agree that they wanted to sell. (Keep in mind that one of the parties - Ivan - had originally said what basically amounted to “over my dead body”). This involved lots of meetings and persuasive conversations with Ivan, as Elder explained to him that we hoped to preserve the house and make it beautiful once again, that we were not planning to put a business in there but wanted to make this our family home. He also went through Ivan's son and daughter, who turned out to be greedy and in debt, and so had serious financial motivations to convince their father to sell. It worked.

And then, finally! They accepted our offer(s).

But then… one of the owners (Denis's sister, co-owner of the southernmost piece), who needed to sign over her portion and who lives all the way out in the boondocks of far-off Chontales where there is limited cell service and lots of cattle, could not be located. This was when negotiations threatened to break down, as one of the parties (the "over my dead body" party) started to lose interest as things got delayed.

Elder thought fast, and remembered that our good friend Ligia is from Chontales and still has family out there. She called up her brother, who very generously offered to go seek out this woman in her little town in the mountains, leaving at 5am one morning for this journey. Amazingly, he tracked her down pretty easily, then called up Elder from his cell phone while he was with her, and contact was made! We were able to confirm that she was due to make the long trip up to Leon that coming weekend for a family wedding, so she would be able to sign over her portion when she arrived.

Armed with that information, plus lots of additional finessing, Elder was able to save the negotiations once more.

And finally, on June 19 - just a couple days before we were due to take off for our June/July U.S. trip - we made the final payments and signed the legal documents, and ...

The house was OURS!

Phew! What a relief it was to have that deal done and not have to talk with any of those crazy parties anymore. Elder in particular was more than ready for that stress to be lifted, as he had born the brunt of it. And just in the nick of time. We could head off on our travels without having to worry about the deal falling through while we were gone, and instead travel with the immense satisfaction and joy of now being first-time home-owners! Yeehaw!

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And here are some pictures of the work being done on the house by Elder's brother Henry, as we left for the States: