House maundering, part 4
Sep. 24th, 2003 12:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carbonelIn which many more things happen, although the description of them may still be somewhat tedious
The MLS listing for my current house went in to the system on Friday, 5 September. We were asking $199,900. I was a little disappointed with that number, since when Bob had first quoted prices to me I had got the impression that $200,000 was the middle of the possible range, not the very top of the listing range. Apparently $200,000 is a really hard psychological barrier, and there are major advantages to keeping it below that. So $199,900 it was. The listing date was a week and a half after my original goal date of 25 August, but not too badly past. And much of the extra time was due to home improvements that, well, improved the place no end.
For anyone who'd like to see what the place looks like, here's the a link to the MLS listing:
http://tinyurl.com/og64
If you click on the house picture there, it'll take you to pictures of the interior. It'll be up for another few weeks, I think.
I had no real idea of what to expect once the house was listed, so I was exceedingly pleased when the receptionist from Bob's office called on Friday and said there'd been a request for a showing around 5:30 on Saturday. I had two people scheduled to come over for a social afternoon, but we usually went out for an early dinner, so it would be easy to be gone then. A few minutes later the receptionist called again -- an agent would like to come over and view the place on his own at 10 am; was that okay? Yes, I said, as long as it was okay for me to be in the house at the time.
Saturday morning came, and the agent showed up. I was a bit nervous because this was the first showing, even if it wasn't about to immediately lead to anything. He looked around approvingly. I'd turned all the lights on, even though it was a bright day, and everything showed to advantage. Shortly after he left, the receptionist called again -- there were two requests for afternoon showings that Saturday. I said it was fine, but there would be people there, and she said that was okay as long as they knew ahead of time, and that it was understandable on such short notice. When the people came, I retreated back to the den with the others, but I could hear occasional comments about the wood floors and the built-ins -- two big selling points.
Sunday was the first scheduled open house. It was scheduled from 1 to 3, and the day was considered fortuitous because the Vikings were playing in the evening. The weather was utterly gorgeous, which was probably a bit of a detriment. I was expected to be out of the house for this one, which was just as well, since I had a gathering of my tea group. Usually they're on Saturdays, but this one was on a Sunday to fit the schedules of six too-busy people.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
daedala showed up to help with final cleaning and arranging. It turned out that the windows really needed two goings-over to get properly clean and there wasn't time for that, but even what was done was an improvement. There was a last-minute scramble to move boxes of stuff from the living room and dining room to the basement, and I just had to spend some time talking to the first visitors that showed up. They weren't interested in buying the place, but they'd owned the house just north of mine, and their cousins had owned my house. The cousins had hoped to make the open house, but weren't able to do it that day. I gave them my phone number and told them they could come by anytime. Still no call from them, which is a shame.
By the time everything was done and I had changed, I was at least 20 minutes late in leaving to pick people up to drive them to Cottage Grove. Luckily we'd overestimated the driving time, so we were only ten minutes late. A fine time was had by all, and when I got home again, my house was empty, and the table in the middle of the kitchen had been moved to the living room. It did make the kitchen look larger, though it's rather disconcerting to keep wanting to put the iced tea pitcher down on empty air because I expect it to still be there.
I think it was that same weekend that I had a bit of a crisis. Everything was crashing in on me. I'd bought a new house on essentially three days' notice, my current house looked nicer than it had in years, and what was I doing? Was I selling my current house for a mess of pottage? Or a pot of messuage? It was triggered bylydy bemoaning my moving to the suburbs and trading wooden floors for wall-to-wall carpeting, which she hated. I rather like carpeting, but I had to admit that the color of the carpets was blah at best. And how much would I regret the loss of my built-ins and nice wood? I was encouraged by a talk with Pat (the temptation to cast Pat and Lydy as the yetzer-hara and the yetzer-hatov is strong, but I shall resist, mostly because I'm not sure which one would be which) in which we discussed the uses of the space in the new place. The tea at Rosemary's was also vastly reassuring, because I realized that if I really wanted a wooden floor and there wasn't one under the carpeting, I could always put one in. The cost would be somewhat more expensive than, but comparable to, putting in new carpeting, and it would wear better than carpeting. I started feeling better about the new place and less frozen in panic after a few days.
(The other thing I wondered about was whether any of this was attributable to drugs. The doctor had upped my dose of antidepressant a few months ago, and I had this flash of wondering if I were having a manic phase. Buying a house that quickly seemed like a classic symptom. Not to mention (on a much smaller scale) cleaning out my "to buy" queue by spending around $150 on CDs. Everyone I've discussed it with has pooh-poohed the notion, though.)
Tuesday was an agents' open house, where agents came by to preview the place for possible showings to their clients. Twelve agents came by, which Bob said was a good turnout.
There were several more showings during the next couple of weeks, mostly during business hours, and each time I warned the receptionist who called that I'd be there, but hiding in my office. There was no problem with that. One person wanted to know about the floor in the office (was it wood underneath?) and I didn't know, but I was able to find the answer before he left by calling DD-B. There are advantages to being on good terms with the previous homeowners. There was also an open house on Tuesday or Wednesday evening (it starts to blur), but it rained and there was a poor turnout.
Bob had been making increasingly encouraging noises all week about one particular couple. At first he'd sounded dubious, then he said he'd sat down with them to work some things out. On Friday, 19 September, he asked me if I would be available that evening. I said I could arrange to be -- I had a meeting of my stock club, but this was a sufficiently good reason to play hooky.
I went off to do some errands around 6 pm, since I thought it was too early for anything to happen, but I forwarded my home phone to my cell phone, just in case. It was a good thing I did, since the phone rang around 6:30. Bob asked if I had a pen and paper handy. "Do I need one?" I asked. That didn't sound promising. "You might," he said. So I dutifully took notes.
The couple Bob had been dealing with had a small house that they were trying to sell. Their purchase of my house would be contingent on the sale of their house. (Boo!) But Bob was willing to buy their house, so assuming there wasn't any major problem with the house, the contingency would soon be removed. (Yay!) They were offering my asking price. (Yay!) But, Bob warned me, they were asking me to cover all their closing costs, including their share of his commission. In all, that would add an additional $6,000 to the costs. (Boo!)
Bob said I had three choices: I could accept the offer, reject it outright, or propose a counteroffer. After a bit of thinking and conferring with Bob, I proposed a counteroffer: I would go down $1,000, to $198,900. If they wanted me to pay their closing costs, I was willing to come up with the cash they needed if they would add the corresponding amount to the selling price. Bob said that that arrangement would take some arranging with the loan officer, since it meant revaluing the house upward, but that it could probably be done easily enough. I finished my errands and went home and jittered. Had I gone down enough in price? Had I needed to reduce my offer at all? Was this the only offer I was going to get?
A couple of hours later, the phone rang again. The caller ID showed it was Bob, and I snatched up the receiver. "They have a counter-counteroffer," he said. They wanted me to go down $1,000 more, to $197,900. I was about to split the difference, go down $500, and something snapped. I told Bob that it was too piddling to fuss with, and I thought the offer was a good one as it stood. Bob is very good at giving direction without incriminating himself (he was in a very delicate position here because he was representing both me as the seller and the other couple as the buyers), and I got the feeling that I had made a reasonable decision. On the other hand, I expect (since it was such a piddling sum) that I would have got the same reaction if I'd offered the extra $500.
While I was waiting for the response back, my parents called. They knew that I'd been expecting an offer, and they wanted the news. I brought them up to date, and my mother said that she couldn't have been as hard-nosed as I was -- she would have offered to split the difference without thinking twice. She's not a wimp by any means, but I am more stubborn about some things than she is. In any case, they were pleased that I'd received an offer so quickly, though they were worried about the contingent issue, minimal though it was.
Shortly after I hung up from them, Bob called back. They'd accepted my offer of $198,900. Whew. Paperwork went back and forth, and the offer was real.
Saturday, Bob was out of town and nothing house-related happened.
Sunday was exciting. Earlier in the week I'd invitedpameladean, lydy, DD-B, Pat, and Lois to my house for brunch at 11. The first three were there to get a last look at the house in its pristine glory, and the other two were congenial company. Plus it was all Pat's fault, so she deserved to see the house when it was looking as good as it was going to get. I served a typical American Jewish brunch -- lox and bagels and cream cheese, scrambled eggs with onions and mushrooms and red peppers and cheese, fruit salad, and coffee cake. It all went very well, and I need to do this sort of thing more often in the new place.
There was a rush to get the brunch things cleaned up, since there was another open house scheduled from two to four. This was just as well, since I have a bad habit of leaving dishes unwashed for embarrassing lengths of time. The guests left just as Bob was arriving for the open house. I'd thought about running off to the RenFest for a few hours, since I had tickets that I was unlikely to be able to use otherwise (I'm out of town the next weekend), but he asked that I stay available. Since I had to get out of the house and didn't really have any place to go, I went to Magpie Coffee (formerly Boathouse Coffee) and nursed a granita for a couple of hours.
Bob called me around four and asked if I were willing to hear another offer. "Of course," I said. He said I should come by his office around 5:30, and I did. It turned out the situation was a little complicated. There was a second couple that had been interested in the place, and were now kicking themselves for not having placed an offer first. Since the offer I had in hand was a contingent one, they wanted to make a backup (not contingent) offer. Bob had mentioned the possibility of this happening to the first couple, and they had decided to up their offer in order to protect themselves. Instead of the $198,900 we had originally settled on, they were now offering $202,000. I had no objection to this, naturally, and did the paperwork to make this official.
I then got to hear the other prospective buyers' agent give that couple's offer. They were offering the original asking price, $199,900, with no contingency. I accepted this as a backup offer, and more paperwork ensued.
On Monday, the buyers had their inspector go through my house. I was exceedingly nervous, since when the inspector had gone through the house I was buying he had found a multitude of things (mostly small) and I had requested (via Bob) that they fix some of them -- which they agreed to. My house was considerably older, and while I believed that it was in good shape, one never knew what an assiduous inspector might come up with. It turned out that it all went well, and Bob's inspection of the buyers' house also went well, and I signed the papers to remove the contingency.
So the upshot is that I will be selling my house for $202,000, no contingency, and the backup buyers have their earnest money back and will have to try elsewhere.
The closing on the house I'm buying is scheduled for noon on 30 September. The closing on the house I'm selling is scheduled for 24 October -- not time set yet. I'm going out of town this weekend, the weekend of October 17 through 19, and the week of October 26 through November 2.
This means that I have exactly one possible weekend to schedule a move if Minn-stf Movers do the bulk of the work, and I much prefer doing it on a Saturday. Which means that the only possible day for the move is Saturday, 11 October. My birthday. I guess a new house for a birthday present isn't an unreasonable present. I just hope enough people show up to help me move.
And if anyone in the Minneapolis area has extra boxes, I'd be happy to hear about it. I just bought some more banker's boxes, and I need to hit up Uncle Hugo's, but more boxes is good.
Here endeth the house saga, at least for now, since I've brought the events up to date.
The MLS listing for my current house went in to the system on Friday, 5 September. We were asking $199,900. I was a little disappointed with that number, since when Bob had first quoted prices to me I had got the impression that $200,000 was the middle of the possible range, not the very top of the listing range. Apparently $200,000 is a really hard psychological barrier, and there are major advantages to keeping it below that. So $199,900 it was. The listing date was a week and a half after my original goal date of 25 August, but not too badly past. And much of the extra time was due to home improvements that, well, improved the place no end.
For anyone who'd like to see what the place looks like, here's the a link to the MLS listing:
If you click on the house picture there, it'll take you to pictures of the interior. It'll be up for another few weeks, I think.
I had no real idea of what to expect once the house was listed, so I was exceedingly pleased when the receptionist from Bob's office called on Friday and said there'd been a request for a showing around 5:30 on Saturday. I had two people scheduled to come over for a social afternoon, but we usually went out for an early dinner, so it would be easy to be gone then. A few minutes later the receptionist called again -- an agent would like to come over and view the place on his own at 10 am; was that okay? Yes, I said, as long as it was okay for me to be in the house at the time.
Saturday morning came, and the agent showed up. I was a bit nervous because this was the first showing, even if it wasn't about to immediately lead to anything. He looked around approvingly. I'd turned all the lights on, even though it was a bright day, and everything showed to advantage. Shortly after he left, the receptionist called again -- there were two requests for afternoon showings that Saturday. I said it was fine, but there would be people there, and she said that was okay as long as they knew ahead of time, and that it was understandable on such short notice. When the people came, I retreated back to the den with the others, but I could hear occasional comments about the wood floors and the built-ins -- two big selling points.
Sunday was the first scheduled open house. It was scheduled from 1 to 3, and the day was considered fortuitous because the Vikings were playing in the evening. The weather was utterly gorgeous, which was probably a bit of a detriment. I was expected to be out of the house for this one, which was just as well, since I had a gathering of my tea group. Usually they're on Saturdays, but this one was on a Sunday to fit the schedules of six too-busy people.
daedala showed up to help with final cleaning and arranging. It turned out that the windows really needed two goings-over to get properly clean and there wasn't time for that, but even what was done was an improvement. There was a last-minute scramble to move boxes of stuff from the living room and dining room to the basement, and I just had to spend some time talking to the first visitors that showed up. They weren't interested in buying the place, but they'd owned the house just north of mine, and their cousins had owned my house. The cousins had hoped to make the open house, but weren't able to do it that day. I gave them my phone number and told them they could come by anytime. Still no call from them, which is a shame. By the time everything was done and I had changed, I was at least 20 minutes late in leaving to pick people up to drive them to Cottage Grove. Luckily we'd overestimated the driving time, so we were only ten minutes late. A fine time was had by all, and when I got home again, my house was empty, and the table in the middle of the kitchen had been moved to the living room. It did make the kitchen look larger, though it's rather disconcerting to keep wanting to put the iced tea pitcher down on empty air because I expect it to still be there.
I think it was that same weekend that I had a bit of a crisis. Everything was crashing in on me. I'd bought a new house on essentially three days' notice, my current house looked nicer than it had in years, and what was I doing? Was I selling my current house for a mess of pottage? Or a pot of messuage? It was triggered by
lydy bemoaning my moving to the suburbs and trading wooden floors for wall-to-wall carpeting, which she hated. I rather like carpeting, but I had to admit that the color of the carpets was blah at best. And how much would I regret the loss of my built-ins and nice wood? I was encouraged by a talk with Pat (the temptation to cast Pat and Lydy as the yetzer-hara and the yetzer-hatov is strong, but I shall resist, mostly because I'm not sure which one would be which) in which we discussed the uses of the space in the new place. The tea at Rosemary's was also vastly reassuring, because I realized that if I really wanted a wooden floor and there wasn't one under the carpeting, I could always put one in. The cost would be somewhat more expensive than, but comparable to, putting in new carpeting, and it would wear better than carpeting. I started feeling better about the new place and less frozen in panic after a few days. (The other thing I wondered about was whether any of this was attributable to drugs. The doctor had upped my dose of antidepressant a few months ago, and I had this flash of wondering if I were having a manic phase. Buying a house that quickly seemed like a classic symptom. Not to mention (on a much smaller scale) cleaning out my "to buy" queue by spending around $150 on CDs. Everyone I've discussed it with has pooh-poohed the notion, though.)
Tuesday was an agents' open house, where agents came by to preview the place for possible showings to their clients. Twelve agents came by, which Bob said was a good turnout.
There were several more showings during the next couple of weeks, mostly during business hours, and each time I warned the receptionist who called that I'd be there, but hiding in my office. There was no problem with that. One person wanted to know about the floor in the office (was it wood underneath?) and I didn't know, but I was able to find the answer before he left by calling DD-B. There are advantages to being on good terms with the previous homeowners. There was also an open house on Tuesday or Wednesday evening (it starts to blur), but it rained and there was a poor turnout.
Bob had been making increasingly encouraging noises all week about one particular couple. At first he'd sounded dubious, then he said he'd sat down with them to work some things out. On Friday, 19 September, he asked me if I would be available that evening. I said I could arrange to be -- I had a meeting of my stock club, but this was a sufficiently good reason to play hooky.
I went off to do some errands around 6 pm, since I thought it was too early for anything to happen, but I forwarded my home phone to my cell phone, just in case. It was a good thing I did, since the phone rang around 6:30. Bob asked if I had a pen and paper handy. "Do I need one?" I asked. That didn't sound promising. "You might," he said. So I dutifully took notes.
The couple Bob had been dealing with had a small house that they were trying to sell. Their purchase of my house would be contingent on the sale of their house. (Boo!) But Bob was willing to buy their house, so assuming there wasn't any major problem with the house, the contingency would soon be removed. (Yay!) They were offering my asking price. (Yay!) But, Bob warned me, they were asking me to cover all their closing costs, including their share of his commission. In all, that would add an additional $6,000 to the costs. (Boo!)
Bob said I had three choices: I could accept the offer, reject it outright, or propose a counteroffer. After a bit of thinking and conferring with Bob, I proposed a counteroffer: I would go down $1,000, to $198,900. If they wanted me to pay their closing costs, I was willing to come up with the cash they needed if they would add the corresponding amount to the selling price. Bob said that that arrangement would take some arranging with the loan officer, since it meant revaluing the house upward, but that it could probably be done easily enough. I finished my errands and went home and jittered. Had I gone down enough in price? Had I needed to reduce my offer at all? Was this the only offer I was going to get?
A couple of hours later, the phone rang again. The caller ID showed it was Bob, and I snatched up the receiver. "They have a counter-counteroffer," he said. They wanted me to go down $1,000 more, to $197,900. I was about to split the difference, go down $500, and something snapped. I told Bob that it was too piddling to fuss with, and I thought the offer was a good one as it stood. Bob is very good at giving direction without incriminating himself (he was in a very delicate position here because he was representing both me as the seller and the other couple as the buyers), and I got the feeling that I had made a reasonable decision. On the other hand, I expect (since it was such a piddling sum) that I would have got the same reaction if I'd offered the extra $500.
While I was waiting for the response back, my parents called. They knew that I'd been expecting an offer, and they wanted the news. I brought them up to date, and my mother said that she couldn't have been as hard-nosed as I was -- she would have offered to split the difference without thinking twice. She's not a wimp by any means, but I am more stubborn about some things than she is. In any case, they were pleased that I'd received an offer so quickly, though they were worried about the contingent issue, minimal though it was.
Shortly after I hung up from them, Bob called back. They'd accepted my offer of $198,900. Whew. Paperwork went back and forth, and the offer was real.
Saturday, Bob was out of town and nothing house-related happened.
Sunday was exciting. Earlier in the week I'd invited
pameladean, lydy, DD-B, Pat, and Lois to my house for brunch at 11. The first three were there to get a last look at the house in its pristine glory, and the other two were congenial company. Plus it was all Pat's fault, so she deserved to see the house when it was looking as good as it was going to get. I served a typical American Jewish brunch -- lox and bagels and cream cheese, scrambled eggs with onions and mushrooms and red peppers and cheese, fruit salad, and coffee cake. It all went very well, and I need to do this sort of thing more often in the new place.There was a rush to get the brunch things cleaned up, since there was another open house scheduled from two to four. This was just as well, since I have a bad habit of leaving dishes unwashed for embarrassing lengths of time. The guests left just as Bob was arriving for the open house. I'd thought about running off to the RenFest for a few hours, since I had tickets that I was unlikely to be able to use otherwise (I'm out of town the next weekend), but he asked that I stay available. Since I had to get out of the house and didn't really have any place to go, I went to Magpie Coffee (formerly Boathouse Coffee) and nursed a granita for a couple of hours.
Bob called me around four and asked if I were willing to hear another offer. "Of course," I said. He said I should come by his office around 5:30, and I did. It turned out the situation was a little complicated. There was a second couple that had been interested in the place, and were now kicking themselves for not having placed an offer first. Since the offer I had in hand was a contingent one, they wanted to make a backup (not contingent) offer. Bob had mentioned the possibility of this happening to the first couple, and they had decided to up their offer in order to protect themselves. Instead of the $198,900 we had originally settled on, they were now offering $202,000. I had no objection to this, naturally, and did the paperwork to make this official.
I then got to hear the other prospective buyers' agent give that couple's offer. They were offering the original asking price, $199,900, with no contingency. I accepted this as a backup offer, and more paperwork ensued.
On Monday, the buyers had their inspector go through my house. I was exceedingly nervous, since when the inspector had gone through the house I was buying he had found a multitude of things (mostly small) and I had requested (via Bob) that they fix some of them -- which they agreed to. My house was considerably older, and while I believed that it was in good shape, one never knew what an assiduous inspector might come up with. It turned out that it all went well, and Bob's inspection of the buyers' house also went well, and I signed the papers to remove the contingency.
So the upshot is that I will be selling my house for $202,000, no contingency, and the backup buyers have their earnest money back and will have to try elsewhere.
The closing on the house I'm buying is scheduled for noon on 30 September. The closing on the house I'm selling is scheduled for 24 October -- not time set yet. I'm going out of town this weekend, the weekend of October 17 through 19, and the week of October 26 through November 2.
This means that I have exactly one possible weekend to schedule a move if Minn-stf Movers do the bulk of the work, and I much prefer doing it on a Saturday. Which means that the only possible day for the move is Saturday, 11 October. My birthday. I guess a new house for a birthday present isn't an unreasonable present. I just hope enough people show up to help me move.
And if anyone in the Minneapolis area has extra boxes, I'd be happy to hear about it. I just bought some more banker's boxes, and I need to hit up Uncle Hugo's, but more boxes is good.
Here endeth the house saga, at least for now, since I've brought the events up to date.
