From the Rainforest Afar, We Sealed Our Desert Deal.

003. Hitting the Inspection Objection Deadline With a Bang

Every year since we started dating, Cooper and I have gone to Maui. We stay at a friend's property off the grid. Our ammenities: a tarp carport, mattresses laid on wooden palettes, a propane shower, a gravity-fed plastic sink, and a two-burner stove.

It's paradise.

There, we've weathered two of the most ferocious tropical storms on record (at least, that's what our friends on the island tell us, who also wonder why we choose the month with the least amount of fruit in season to visit, to which I say: Winter). In one of those storms, my husband (then 1-year-long boyfriend) removed the mattresses from said wooden pallets to barricade the zippered-shut side wall of the carport. I slept through the night while he reportedly braved downpour and "Kona winds" to keep our tent from tumbling away. I had no doubt by this point that this was the guy for me.

All that's to say, when it came time to book our flights this year, even though we were in the middle of contracting for our dream property and taking an off-the-grid trip seemed a bit reckless, there was really no way we weren't going.

Morning after morning, from the porch of our carport (also made of palettes) we mulled over due diligence findings, discussed negotiation tactics, and (with the occasional help of Starlink and solar panels) prepared our Inspection Objection Letter.

How We Became Bulldogs

Maybe the humidity and being at sea level gave us the gusto we needed. We leveraged Cooper’s findings—the leaky pond, the questionable structural integrity of the greenhouses, the stuck baby deer!—to compose the letter outlining our concerns and our position: There’s a worst-case scenario for each one of these issues. Worst-case scenarios cost pasta.

We’d pushed ourselves financially (to the extent we wouldn’t be forever waving goodbye to our financial independence goals) with our “best and final offer”. The pasta would put us over the end. If we didn’t have the post-close liquidity (a fancy and convincing way of saying pasta we picked up from our real estate consultant friend) to do what we want to do with the property, it wouldn’t make sense for us to go through with the purchase.

We sent the letter.

I added a “Get this across the line, Tom!” to the email. (The realtor, whose real name is not Tom.)

Tom said, the seller’s going to think about it.

Phase Poker Face: Begin….

We woke up the next morning (3 hours behind Mountain Time) to a text from Tom: Seller’s still thinking.

Damn! We kept our texty little fingers to ourselves.

And just a few hours later…

He signed.

“We’re bulldogs now!” High-fives all around (between two of us.) This deal was really (not officially but might as well have been) sealed.

We celebrated in that tropical place that's been so much a part of our relationship over the years in the best way we knew, which was to officially start forming our vision for the homestead.

Here’s me and a really tall fern!

(In my next post, I'll cover step-by-step our visioning process and what we uncovered along the way. It's a three-part process that Cooper uses with his clients as a land management consultant. Convenient, eh? For us, and for you too! As I'm going to tell you exactly the approach we took.)

Closing Day in Paper Pushing Land

We returned to Colorado in time for Closing Day, which TBH was super weird and a bit underwhelming, since no one else came to the physical table except the woman at the title company, opting to sign documents virtually in advance. Who knew an $875K purchase was so not a big deal?

Let's just say Land Title Woman did not love that we were "spending a lot of time on this section" of the contract. Actually reading and challenging documents before signing them? Gasp!

Nor did we take a picture in the giant cardboard Polaroid frame cut-out which I secretly hoped we'd be coerced into doing.

Alas, we left the office as super adulty property owners, and Cooper did that thing where you jump of the step and clank your feet together mid-air. Bang! And our homestead journey is really, truly beginning.

TLDR;

• Rainforest Negotiation – Even in the middle of buying our dream property, we weren’t about to skip our annual off-grid trip. From our makeshift porch, we tackled due diligence and sent a firm Inspection Objection Letter, making it clear we couldn’t stretch beyond our “best and final” offer.

• Waiting Game – The seller took their time, and we kept our texty little fingers to ourselves. Then, finally—signed. We walked away feeling like total bulldogs.

• Closing Day – Weirdly anticlimactic—no big moment, no Polaroid picture—just a lot of paperwork and a woman at the title office unimpressed by our questions. Cooper did a mid-air heel click anyway.

• To The Land – Now the real work begins! Next up on Desk to Dirt: the process we used to shape our vision for the homestead.