Been a tense few days. They came back with a list of stuff from the inspection report they wanted fixed. Mostly they wanted money off the accepted counteroffer. Total of repairs was only 3150. BUT since our counteroffer was only 3000 higher than their initial offer, we would have been another 150.00 below. So we went thru the list with a comb....Did allow 500 for one item. Several, we had OUR electrician come in and address cause one DID concern us enough to have him come in. One was an under warranty fix on my gas stove. And the best ones were dh's response to the GFCI issue and the smoke detectors.
GFCI is ONLY required to be updated in a house this age IF the room was renovated. We renovated the upstairs bath and had the electrical brought up to current code. BUT the kitchen was never touched. We did NOT have an obligation to upgrade there. Inspector IMPLIED it was code violation. It is NOT as our house is up to the code current at last renovation (back in the 50's/60's for many rooms). And CFGI's were NOT required at that time.
Smoke detectors have a life span of 10 years. When we bought the house, they were BARELY valid but they were valid. Okay, 3 1/2 years later, they are outdated. When the inspector came back to pick up his radon testing equipment, we showed him the brand new ones we purchased and planned on letting the new homeowners place them where THEY wanted them. All the inspector said was that the batteries needed replacing since not having batteries installed would give the new owners a "false sense of security". Dh turned that around on them and stated that we knew the smoke detectors needed replacing, we had the news ones in house, and that simply replacing the batteries in the OLD ones (which was what the inspector suggested) would give the home owners a false sense of security.
Never argue with a man with two mechanical engineering degrees AND time on his hands, LOL. We were angry at first but drafting a response and going thru several drafts tend to help get the angry out of the response, LOL. Oh and a weekend in between. We decided they were simply trying to get back down to their original offer.
Got word today, they accepted our response. The ONE item we did allow was the deck posts that are not pressure treated and as a result are showing signs of dry rot.
So yeah, they won ONE item, 5 others were fixed (3 at no cost but a few mins of time or under warranty) and a LITTLE ($60 for the electrician) out of pocket for the other two. And our contractor says it's gonna cost more than 500 for the deck post repair. And he's very reasonably priced.
Unfortunately we can't be sure until we get the check at the end of closing if it's a done deal. Here in NC, a buyer can back out at any point for NO reason all the way up to the end of closing. But they have money to lose now if they do...money spent on inspections, money put in escrow, money they gave us (thru our realtor) to pull the listing OFF the active market once the Due Diligence is done. Dh and I are cautiously optimistic.