Monday, August 10, 2015

It's not all puppy dogs and rainbows

I believe for many of us who are buying a Ryan Home, we are current home owners upgrading to a home for numerous reasons.  Regardless of the why, it seems most of us are selling a home why we are building.  The sale of our current home is part of this experience.

We had received some negative feedback that the yard was over grown.  My property backs up to the woods and with the hillside, it's a pain to tend to.  Since I never used it, I let it grow in.  Saturday we made plans to start clearing it all out.  Friday while at home depot renting a brush hog, I got an email from my agent.  The couple at the house was preparing an offer.

I was excited for our first offer, but I was leery.  This agent had scheduled to show his clients my house on Tuesday and cancelled last minute when his clients made an offer on the house they were seeing before mine.  When he called to arrange another showing time slot, he said the deal for the other house fell apart and he'd like to show them mine.  While driving up to our build lot, I wondered why their prior deal fell apart.  Was it:

1) Financing issue - If they can't get financing, why are they seeing my house....that cant be it.
2) Home Issue - Maybe a home inspection found something, but then again, hard to get a home inspection that fast.....that cant be it.
3) Low Offer - Maybe they made an extremely low offer and it was rejected.  I suspect that must be it.

The offer was 82% of the listing price and included seller assist money back to them.  We already lowered our price to something more like what others have sold in my neighborhood, but they still only offer 84% of that and asked for a discount of just under 30,000.  I was pretty insulted as they priced my house the same as the townhomes in my neighborhood which have no yard, hottub, or newer kitchen and bath.While I wanted to tell them to go F@#$ Off, my agent said to keep diaglog open, I should give them a counter.  We gave them a counter off and then they gave us one.  We were still 25,000 off.  I decided at that price I could rent the house and make a killing on a single parent who wants their child in a killer school district.  My agent even got frustrated with them as it didn't seem like they were basing their price on any local comparable. 

We stopped talking to them as we had an open house to get ready for.  Saturday I hired some day labors to cut out my brush and clean up my back yard.  While it isn't perfect, it is a huge improvement.  The day labor wasn't that expensive and we got 80% of what I wanted done complete for the open house.

Sunday's open house was good.  We had to stage and sit it ourselves as our agent doesn't sit them and she couldn't find an agent to work it.  So we got signs from her, put out the cookies, and my fiance worked the open house while I took the dogs.  We had lots of positive people and 7 showings.

While building might seem overwhelming picking colors and options, it's nothing compared to the horrible experience it has been to sell a house.

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