SAYING GOODBYE!!!

So – the deal is done. Our house is sold. It did not happen the way we expected…at all.

If someone had told me during the first 4 weeks our house was on the market without any showings that we would have 11 showings in 1 week, I would have thought it IMPOSSIBLE!

We thought me met the buyers for our house at park – the couple we called “the miracle couple.” I still think they are, but not because they are the ones that bought our house.

We were offered 7K below our asking price by a (totally different)“dream couple” according to our realtor. They are Iraq war vets (we found out later) and had their financing all ready and wanted an immediate move in date because their last deal fell through on the sellor’s fault. Which means of course, there was no contingency. We did not want them to by the house we wanted our miracle couple to by the house.

So we played hardball and informed our realtor “NOPE, we are not taking anything less than full asking price. It is what it is – we just can’t, financially.”

Our realtor laughs nervously and approaches the reply with, “ I REALLY don’t think that’s your best strategy.”

Since we didn’t care if they bought it or not, our replay again was, “It is what it is.”

Little did we know he would call back in no less than 20 minutes to say they accepted the bid…IF we cleaned the gutters, left the washer and dryer, trimmed a gigantic tree limb, and fixed a portion of the roof professionally.

WHATEVER!! Well, we did concede on the first two, but again, we didn’t care if they bought our house because we really wanted that other couple to buy the house. We said absolutely not on the other two. We were actually trying to unhinge them to back off. Well, again in 20 minutes they accepted the offer.

Well, we had this perfectly good offer, albeit the VERY HIGH realtor’s commission, or we had this cuter than cute couple that we found at the park who were waiting to hear if she got a job to make their decision final, even though their financing was totally in order without it. They wanted to cover their bases.

So what else could we do? We gave the “park miracle couple” until 10 AM the next morning to tell us one way or the other. They sent a cute email saying they couldn’t decide that quickly and wished us the best of luck. Here is part of the miracle - If it had not been for them, we would NEVER have had the nerve to ask for full price, or to negotiate NOT doing a couple of pricey things to the house.

So that is that – we move out of here QUICK. November 8^th – for a closing date of November 15^th. The house we are building hasn’t even broken ground yet. But that is JUST fine because we will be essentially broke after selling this cute house of ours (because of the horrible housing market.) Brian’s parents have graciously offered to let us live there and save some money.

Still I see the miracle in it all – In a buyers market we sold the house in 1 ½ months – and out of the house 2 weeks later. That is 2 months exactly from the date we bought our “house to be built.” AND we got full asking price…before the end of October – no contingency. This was exactly my prayer!!! I am SOOOOO grateful I must say!