We've sold our house!!! Woohoo!
This has been by far one of the most stressful weeks this year so far. I've never experienced so many highs and lows within such a small space of time.
Our house has been listed since the middle to end of May this year and whilst we have had many, and I mean many, viewings we just weren't getting any offers. It was frustrating to say the least as we also weren't getting any negative feedback either so we didn't feel there was anything we could actually do to improve our situation. Any comments we did have back as reasons for not buying our house were things like "the house is too far from the lake", which short of physically picking up the house and moving it down the back yard 50 metres or so, we couldn't do much about. We eventually did the only thing we could do and that was to drop the price! This had the effect of causing some interest and in the last few weeks we've been averaging 2-3 viewings a week, sometimes more.
Last Saturday a couple (first time buyers) came to look the place over, they liked it so came back the next day, Sunday, and were here for 2 1/2 hours! They said they would write up an offer on Monday. Monday came and went, no offer, Tuesday came and went and by 5pm there was still no offer. Our stand-in Realtor called to say that she was expecting an offer from them that evening but hey, I've got someone else who wants to look at the property this evening, between 7:45pm and 8:15pm? So, off we troop with the children to Dairy Queen for desert.
At around 10:00pm our Realtor calls to say she has received an offer and will be round shortly to go through it. We are cautiously excited. We shouldn't have been. It was an horrendous offer, way short of the asking price, especially as we had already dropped substantially. To be perfectly honest we were quite insulted as they had insisted that almost any item not screwed down was included in the deal and still offered less than they knew we paid for the house last year! An hour of ranting and raving later and we decided to sleep on it.
Wednesday dawns, the plot thickens. Our Realtor calls their Realtor (hereinafter called the 1st party) and explains how we are less than happy with their offer, explains our reasons why and reports back that he now understands why. Our Realtor then calls us to say that the second viewers (hereinafter called the 2nd party) the previous night went very well indeed and that they would like to come back to view the house in daylight this very afternoon. If they like the house as much as they did the previous night they are going to write an offer there and then! Woohoo! Meanwhile, the 1st party's Realtor calls to ask if we are going to counter offer "my party will go higher!". Shortly after our Realtor calls to say that the 2nd party, loved the house and are currently writing an offer. Double Woohoo! Now, get this, 10 minutes after that our Realtor calls again to say the 2nd party wrote the offer, signed it, put it in an envelope and sealed it, left their Realtor and within minutes called and said they wanted to hold off putting the offer in. Woonot! Apparently they did not want to get in to a bidding war, which I can understand, but this was very frustrating as to be perfectly frank if their offer had been a good one we would have accepted it because the 1st party had really got our backs up!
So, back to 1st party for us and the counter offer which we drew up around 4:30pm and gave them only until 7:00pm to accept or reject. They took it to the wire and we had to wait until 7:00pm on the dot for their phone call but accept they did.
So whilst we are all feeling quite euphoric at the moment it is being balance out by the sheer and utter terror of having to pack up and move countries (again) all within the space of 5weeks!!!
Watch this space, I'm sure this isn't over yet...
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