My Everest…

Bear with me while I rant a bit !!!   We have put in 2 offers on a place we liked and both were rejected all because the owner will only accept Firm offers.  It would be nice to know this going in beforehand but no….he’s got to be an ass and get people’s hopes up when we did the first offer they said “ We are going to let it expire because your house is not on the market “…ok fair.   So we rushed to clean and get it on the market and then we sweetened the deal by another 5K.  Put in another offer….and the ass let it expire again!   Why? Because our house hasn’t sold yet !  WTF!   If you are looking for firm offers, then put that down somewhere that the agents can see so people don’t get their hopes up, and the agents don’t have to go thru the frustration along with the potential buyers! It’s not fair to anyone.  If you want to be an asshole about it so be it but there’s a nice way to do it and then there’s your way.  I know our agent is on it in every way shape or from its early days yet but for me it feels like forever and it’s just the beginning.  I try to take everything with humor and sarcasm; it’s my coping mechanism.   But for now all i can do is just wait for the magic to happen or try and will that phone to ring! I sit here into week 2 of selling my home. The perfection in this place is killing me. The stack of agent business cards is growing on the island.  I have stopped asking my agent for feedback on showings as I know he will send them to me when and if he gets them.  So no response is either I’m thinking…or I’m not interested.  Honestly if you are not interested then fill out the dam response card and put all of us out of our miseries.   Quite frankly it’s rude! Would you like my agent to leave you and your clients hanging?  I just want to leave something in a sink, a cup on a counter, or just something drastic underwear on the floor!  I have no showings today. Why do I need to leave my home in a state of perpetual perfection?  Because I know that is the day that someone would come in without an appointment.  This happened to us a long time ago. We were selling our condo, the first time ever selling anything.   We came home from work in a rush, changed our clothes, and left them on the bed. We had no showings that night.   Came home later that night to a business card on the counter.   I called my agent and reamed her out, who in turn reamed the other agent out.  The other agent lived in the building, so he came and apologized.  A few days later the condo sold…we still laugh about it saying maybe we need to leave out some boxers, undies and bra just to drum up a sale!   They say the buyers need to picture themselves in the home. Maybe they need to picture whatever image that drums up for them too !  Whatever floats your boat and sells my house.  

So we have had our place on the market now for 2 ½ weeks during this time we have had 2 offers.  The first offer we got my agent said is a bit low and offensive, my husband said it was “a slap in the face”.  It was around 40k under asking. I was like whatever let’s play the game and see what happens so we countered and nothing came of it.  During this whole time as I am looking for places to buy, I have entertained the thought of putting in a lowball offer on a condo just to see what would happen.  But my husband tells me that it’s insulting, my agent sides with him (go figure…Men!).   So that being said I refrain from doing so.  I get a text on a random day not expecting any action. It’s from my agent. We have an offer I sent it to you.  So I get excited and we open up the offer and my first reaction was to scroll down to the number part.  Hubby and I in unison look at the number and we were like what the fuck? Why are they even bothering with this !   It was even lower than the other offer that got rejected by us. My agent told us last time not to get offended by offers and I wasn’t but this time I was.  Like, why don’t I just wrap up the keys in a big red bow with a $100 bill and give them to you? Seriously what were you thinking???  They were already informed by our agent that we rejected an offer that was higher!   Then why are you proceeding to bother with a lower offer?   60k under asking do you think  we fell off the turnip truck yesterday.  Seriously?! 

So we play the game and we counter…..I know the house is just 4 walls.  But it’s my biggest investment that I have. Anyone who is trying to sell a house knows that they want to sell for as much as they can.  But don’t insult people…it just makes me want to release my inner bitch and that is not a good thing. I also understand that when I buy I want to buy low.  But listen to what your agents are saying and think about how you would feel receiving an offer like that?

 We are averaging an offer a week.  So week 3 comes around and I say this to my agent but I tell him this week needs to come with a better offer than the last 2.  No comment,  he has no control over what comes in here. Low and behold he calls me to tell me the people who gave us the really low offer have sweetened the pot significantly from the last time 35k of significance!  This would bring them right under our minimum amount to sell.   He asks if he can get them to that number or over will we sign a conditional.  Yes we will.  There was a bit of back and forth with the agents but that is why we have them.  They put a clause in our agreement that they didn’t want us to keep showing our house.  Umm well I wasn’t born in a stupid hat and neither was hubby to know that, that is not a good idea!  That clause was the deal breaker.   So they let us keep showing our house until they sell theirs. Showings have slowed down a little bit.  My agent is preparing for another open house this weekend.  He texts me asking if he needs to print off any of his paraphernalia.  I tell him no he has plenty except for being low on pens.  Think on this ..people come with their own agents and leave with my agent’s pens!  I can stop finding irony in it.  Anyhow…back to the open house it showed more interest than the last one we had. Our agent tells me everyone had good things to say.  At this point I’m like, that’s great stop stroking my ego.  I just need someone to put their money where their mouth is and bring me an offer to top the other conditional offer I have!  A firm offer would be nice.   But beggars can’t be choosers!  

So we have had an offer and now we are realizing that when things firm up in a few months time, as of right now we will be homeless! That’s right my friends, we have been watching the market for condos and there is nothing coming up in our price range with our wants and needs unless we want to pay the ridiculous price of around $ 1 million for a 1200sq ft unit.  Yup no need to do a double take on it, you read that right.  So what to do?  We are going to try and take another whack at the first guy who said no to us twice. Why not?  However the problem here is he knows we want it so he’s going to make us pay!!! The discussions between the agents were now he will accept a conditional offer but only if we give him x amount of $$$.  He will not budge on that amount, not one red cent if there were any in circulation! Let’s see what happens this time he might not like it and turn us down again.   The reason why we are stuck on that one particularly is that it comes with 2 parking spaces and a storage unit.   Finding a condo like that in our price range (and sometimes out of our price range) seems to be a unicorn.   You can get 2 out of the 3 and then you need to rent or forage for the 3rd.   Hence why we are a tad bit fixated on this one.   The verdict is in!   Third time must have been the charm here, That, and a bit more money always seems to grease the wheels in the right way.  We are tied into a conditional agreement with the condo guy (geez almost put condom guy lol) he actually agreed to a conditional that ties us to him for a bit. Our agent asked for them to have a no showing clause in there, and after a bit of discussion they agreed.  I mean we gave him the moon and the sun.  Please at least give me a bit of cheese!   So now we are back at the waiting stage for the other people to sell their place or another more appealing offer comes in on our place in the meantime.  I’ve lost count….i think this is day 29 on the market! I believe that is what I saw on my listing.I’ve also lost count as to how many showings we’ve had and open house traffic.  All I know is that it has been busy!  As for my stress and my pain, they vary from day to day…I actually think I am riding this wave considerably well.  No flares from the bear so we are ok there.  I haven’t been down for the count at any stage.  I have been exhausted just from the up and leaves of the showings, and the constant tidying, or the floor washing by the front door (because people can’t contain themselves to the darn mat) but that’s what I signed up for.  I’m just hoping that packing will be just as well received. 

I need to tell you about the extended gameplay from our conditional offer people!  They requested to have home inspections, fireplace inspections etc. So the one day my agent tells me that everything went well inspection wise except for the fireplace mantle.  HUH!!  As it is a wood mantle and the fireplace is a wood burning fireplace it needs to be 12 inches away from the firebox according to code and ours is 8.  He tells me that the people buying the house like the room the way it is, and the mantle.  But we need to bring it up to code.  I’m like I really don’t want to touch the thing and ruin everything so I asked for other options.  He’s like well the other option is to give them $1000 off the asking price when we go firm. So I talk to hubby and I call him back and tell him this … I’m like well $1000 off here.  Give a little more for the condo. Doesn’t sound like a great deal to me unless you are donating $1000 to the cause.  So tell you what …we are going to fix it!  We know someone who will do it for a nice steak dinner and a bottle of booze.  He’s like this may be a deal breaker.. I’m like let’s be honest here.  They are probably not going to use the fireplace,  eventually they will put in a gas one just like we were intending to do.  If I start messing with that mantle it is going to royally mess up the centre of everything on it.   So either they take it the way it is or I fix it but I am not giving them $1000! (I need to tell you that some of this is happening on a mandated walk as we had to take the dog out any how,  it’s cold out… the people who had their showing are 20 min into my time we finished our walk and are now waiting for them to leave we both need to pee!! Thankfully our agent told the showing people to leave).  They had 15mins until the deadline and 10min later we got the message stating that they agreed to our terms.  Phew!!!   Sometimes you need to play hardball.   Then afterwards you wonder if they demanded us to fix that ….NOPE! Tad bit, stressed!  YUP.

37 DOM ….no it’s not the name of a fancy new video game that’s about to hit the shelves. DOM= Days On Market my friends.  This is how long our house took to sell.   It’s how long we have been waiting to not be on constant hypervigilant clean up duty.   It means we can leave somewhat of a mess behind in the house and not care that somebody is going to walk in unannounced and see it.  Let the dust fall and we will clean you up when we feel like cleaning, because that is exactly what I did today.  I put in my usual load of stuff in the laundry, grabbed a cup of coffee and just relaxed and didn’t need to rush for anything.   Told my friends we sold the house and then went out to lunch with one of them and didn’t worry that the machine was still running or that I still needed to vacuum after watching the dog.   I had time and no worries!  Quite frankly to say it’s been a pretty good day taking my time with everything.  But that will return to something crazy busy soon when we flip our minds into packing mode.  I’m hoping we don’t have a lot as everytime one of the kids moves out we do the toss and donate.  So it shouldn’t be a lot….just our own hoarding ways !