We’re in contract on one side
Aug 19, 2005 The Story of My Life
*Our* house is in contract. It’s contingent on us getting the other house and we should know about that by the end of the business day. We’re supposed to have another showing this evening but hopefully they’ll cancel. The people are pre-approved so we don’t need a back-up.
Their offer was lower than we expected to go (we negotiated it back up a little) but we decided to risk it because if we got this other house, it would end up being a better deal to have it sell quickly than to hold out for a higher offer. That kind of thing is so hard to figure out.
We feel good about it because we know a bit about this couple. They’re young, about to be married, they will move in after their honeymoon. We like the idea of people starting their lives together here and we know that they will appreciate all the things we’ve done. We were hoping it didn’t go to a landlord, too, since it was a rental before we had it and the neighbors were so glad when we bought it.
On the other hand, the house we want is owned by a spendthrift. It’s so tempting to get your back up when you’re doing these negotiations and say, “He offered what? Well, to hell with him!” This guy is just trying to eke out every little bit of money he can get on the house (it’s paid off — it belonged to his parents who are now in a retirement home). But then we thought, heck, this is his childhood home and likely it’s got a lot of emotional baggage with it for him — good or bad. He’s trying to negotiate this from states away and likely doesn’t know much about the Columbus market or even the state of the house. He’s had someone do a lot of the cosmetic work we thought we would have to do (they pulled up the carpet in the bathrooms — there’s beautiful original tile there now and they finished the floors). And we talked to the man doing the renovations and got his take on the house. (He also flips houses himself so he was telling us a bit more about the floors and things.) And ultimately, we want the house. We want the neighborhood and we like the house a lot so heck, we’ll pay what he’s asking. (He basically said he’d take asking plus he tacked on closing so he’ll pay closing but we’ll pay more on the mortgage and we’ve bargained him down quite a bit from there but not as much as we were hoping.)
This is what’s strange about real estate. It’s not like you can go price match at Best Buy or bring in an ad and make them meet their competitor’s sale price. This guy has a monopoly on *that* house. If we want it, we’re going to have to bite the bullet.
It’s ok though. It’s still less than we expected to have to spend to get into the neighborhood. And again, we like it. I’m a little worried that our king-size bed won’t fit into any of the bedrooms. We bought the mattress just a couple of years ago so I’d hate to have to get rid of it just yet.
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Now the next question
Aug 18, 2005 The Story of My Life
Why didn’t I want to move now? Why did I want to wait ’til spring?
Because I fear change.
Brett and I both fear change so one person makes the decision, pushes and pulls the other person into it, and then when the person finally gives in and gets excited, the person who initiated the change has a nervous breakdown.
I can’t wait until it’s Brett’s turn to have a nervous breakdown. I’m so tired of being the freaked out person for the past few weeks. He’ll go into a fetal position when we close, I betcha.
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Why we want to move now
Aug 18, 2005 The Story of My Life
People keep asking us that and the truth is, I don’t know. How this family works is that I get mad schemes and drag Brett into them. Brett rarely wants to have his way on anything except what movie to rent (he always wins that argument). When Brett does have strong feelings about something I have learned to trust him. He picks out our cars. He decides when to buy them. He makes big huge financial decisions about investments and budgets because he’s better at them. I do things like decide when we’re going to have a baby or when we’re going to adopt. I make all of the emotional decisions for the family but Brett’s about the cash.
Back when we first got married I thought that when it came to any decisions, I should weigh in with my opinion whether or not it was an informed one. See, I didn’t yet realize that hooking up with the right person is like having a good doubles partner in tennis. Sure you can continue to run your ass all over the court trying to get every shot coming in over the net or you could step back and let your partner cover the area beyond your reach.
It took me a few years but eventually I realized that Brett knows a lot more about certain things. He knows more about investments, life insurance, interest rates and other things I find so boring that I skip all articles about them in Newsweek and go straight to the “newsmakers” section in the back.
The other thing about Brett is that when he does venture an opinion about our next financial move, he’s generally been doing his research for a long time. He’s slow to warm to things but once he’s made his decision, he stays the course regardless of the obstacles (he’s a taurus). So when he came home from the mortgage broker’s and announced he thought we should move, I knew we were moving. (As it turns out, Brett has been researching for months so when he sat down to give me his arguments and brought his carefully color-coded and plastic covered presentation materials, I knew we were moving.)
I have one in real life friend who was concerned that Brett was railroading me so let me assuage you of your concerns should they be similar.
1. I trust Brett. He does not make these big decisions lightly.
2. I trust Brett. He loves his family and would never knowingly do anything to harm us.
3. I trust Brett. He reads Kiplinger’s Finance for fun.
4. I trust Brett.
I take the lazy way out, I know, when I trust him but it’s not a blind trust. It’s just that in fifteen years of togetherness, he’s never been wrong about these types of decisions and when I’ve held firm and we’ve done it my way, we’ve always regretted it. (Ask Brett about that place we moved to. The one the neighbors fondly called “The Pit.” That’s when I humbly got off my high horse.)
Anyway, I asked him why he wants to move now and why not in the spring? That’s what everyone is asking me and I have only a vague idea so I wanted him to explain it to me in details.
This is how he started, “China is poised to be the next economic super power…”
And then somewhere in the discussion between “fossil fuels” and “outsourcing,” I fell asleep but before I fell asleep it made sense.
We want to move to a new neighborhood and we have specific areas in mind. We want to sell the van before it drops its transmission so we want to be on a busline and in a place where we can walk to more things. (This also has to do with the way gas prices continue to increase.) We want to be in a good school system so that if one or both of our children need school — because I need to go back to work or because one of them decides they want to go — we can feel good about sending them. We can qualify for a mortgage to buy one of these houses now but might not be able to if either of us loses our job. (We could continue to afford the payments but on paper, we’d be a bad risk just like we were for this house — my mom had to co-sign even though the payments were less than we were paying in rent.) And then there’s the whole China as potential international economic super-power. Somehow that plays into it and I’m sure those of you who actually read all of the stories in Newsweek know just what Brett’s talking about. Me, I trust him but I don’t really know (or care) what the heck he’s talking about.
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Tags: my mom
We got an offer
Aug 17, 2005 The Story of My Life
It’s not a great offer so we’re sending a counter tomorrow. Still no word on the other house. IF the other house comes through, the people still want to close so early on our house that perhaps we’d be living in a grandparent’s basement for awhile.
We are trying to be chipper about it. Selling/buying houses is a headache.
The market is incredibly soft in our neighborhood so if we lost this offer … well, it could be a problem. Or it wouldn’t be.
You know what’s nice? When we’re eighty, we’ll know how this ends.
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Late update
Aug 17, 2005 The Story of My Life
We had three showings today right in a row so I spent the afternoon cleaning up for it and trying not to yell at the kids for dragging junk back out. We officially hit realtor.com (our mls# is 2536989) but the pics aren’t up yet.
The owners of the house we’re interested in came back with a truly lousy offer (they actually raised the asking price but offered to pay closing, as if this made it a deal) and our realtor said we should play hardball. I told him that I trusted him so he sent back another offer that’s more reasonable. He said their realtor begged him, “Don’t let this deal die!” The house has been on the market three months and with the soft market, their realtor is feeling frustrated that they wouldn’t meet us halfway.
I went out with Amber and our friend, P, last night and had a grand time. P. says she will be moving in a couple of years but I think she should just move to the neighborhood we’re looking at and we’ll all be best friends forever.
I’d write more but there is work to be done, dammit! And I must do it!
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Tags: Erica