Delusioned

Published by Philip G

Could there be any more drama when looking for a place?

This has sure been an interesting weekend for me. Three offers, so far, has fallen through, and none of them by any fault on our own.

I swear, people can be such babies when put into a corner. Lets see, a slight recap on what’s happened.

First off, we have place number 1, in a quiet community of Chimney Hills, right across the street from Richland College (actually, most of the places are in this community). This place was on the market for over 70 days, and we couldn’t quiet figure out why. I took a look and immediately fell for it. So we dropped an offer. After talking with their agent, we found out the place was under contract for a couple months with a contingency. Apparently the contingency fell through and the house was put back onto the market. Great, we thought, we got the jump! Well, little did we know, the owners had a chat amongst themselves. It was taking a while to get a reply, we thought it was going well. It turns out, the owners decided not to sell. Their agent was no happy. She went back twice trying to convince them otherwise, with no luck. So, there goes offer number one out the window.

Well, back we go to the market. Saturday we look at four more places. Only one of them really appealed to me and we put an offer down. This place is actually about a mile from where I currently live. It’s in a nice, highish priced neighborhood with very apparent developments coming in that will only increase the value. So, basically, it was a good investment, even though the location is farther than I desired (where I currently lived). Little did we know, however, there was a whole drama episode going on between the owner and her mother. Here’s the story; we put an offer down and got talked up to a certain amount. The two agents agreed and supposedly the seller also agreed, but when her agent went to get her to sign the papers, she refused stating she wasn’t going to sign unless it was x amount (more than agreed). Her agent called mine, in attempts to raise our price but no go. As a matter of fact, it just infuriated my agent and myself. It turns out the seller does not want to sell the place but is being pressured to by her mother because, from what I can gather, her mother does not like the guy she has shacked up with her in the place. And to cap that, her mother dropped a huge chunk down on the place and wanted that back (I assume it’s related to her dislike of the guy). So, her mother was pressuring her to sell to get her money back and to kick said boy out. Two birds, makes sense to me. My agent and I decided this most definitely would not be a good investment to go forward with. We have a feeling even if we did get her to sign the papers, she wouldn’t have shown for the closing.

Back to square one. We had to start searching all over again. This time, since I originally like the Chimeny Hills community, we focused in there without a garage requirement. We have a good handful of places, 7 total. We checked out each one, but one which we knew before hand wouldn’t suit my desires.

First place, was good. Just like the floor plan of the original place I looked at. I didn’t care much for the colour scheme, but that’s changeable. It was on my list of possibility. Place two and three were a different floor plan, they had two full floors with a low celling on the first floor. This something I didn’t care about. I wanted a big open living room area. The next two places were awesome. They were place one with an added four hundred square feet but no garage. The last place was just a duplicate of the middle two, with water damage.

So, I choose the second place with the larger floor plan and this one was finished up nicely. The other one wasn’t as finished and had a very apparent foundation shift. Place one, we’ll call Chimney Sweep place, is what I wanted. We called up their agent and she has informed me there was an offer put in. Her clients (sellers) shot back a counter-offer and they were waiting for reply saying they were still open for offers. Well, this place was cheep, my agent and I both agreed and went in at full price, no strings attached. And now let the drama begin!

It would seems the sellers were shunned at the time frame we had. I mean, we had a two week close date and the sellers hadn’t even found a place to move in yet. What the hell? Let me let you in on a little known fact; their place has been on the market for over 70 days. And they have not found a place yet? What the hell have they been going the past 70 days? Now that’s know, the sellers are unable to decide which offer to take. Ours or the previous offer they countered on. You know what they do next? Oh, they do reced their counter offer, but then they tell both parties, “Make your best offer” and we have until 1pm the next day. What the f*?! Talk about fishing for money. Oh, their agent denied that, but we know that is what they are doing. It is funny, we had my mortgage agent call her up to put the bug in her ear while faxing over an official pre-approval letter. He managed to talk to her and he, himself, wasn’t impressed with her apparent knowledge of the business itself.

Well, the deadline goes by and we hear nothing from them. My agent calls her, an hour later, trying to figure out what’s going on. Her reply was like in indecisive child — “well, you know, it’s a hard choice..” at which point my agent trying to figure out why? And told her straight up, no it’s not, it is a yes or no answer. She said she was going to talk to the sellers and call us back an hour later. Two hours later, we hear nothing. My agent calls her and she doesn’t answer. He picks up another cell phone, calls her and she answered right away. Talk about avoiding him. Wow. Pressure is on and she just told him “We’ll we’re gonna go ahead with the other offer.” At this point he and I are just fuming at them and decided go for it, your loss.

Now we’re at where we are today. Fall back place is vacant, which is a good thing, however, the foundation needs to be closely checked out. My agent’s son actually own a foundation rebuilding company and knows these things. So, today, both of them are suppose to be taking a close look at this place to insure everything is in the up and up before we decide to put an offer down. And of need be, write something in as a conditional in getting anything fixed. This place isn’t too bad, same layout, but does need more work inside done. It has green carpet (omg?!), walls are painted difference colours in each room (wtf?!) and the top loft has a bunch of cabinets which I have no clue why. Another “bonus” or disadvantage, however you look at it, is they shrank the master bedroom to create a giant walk in closet (that looks half finished) to make room for a giant bathroom that any woman would die for. I mean, it has a pedestal sink, plus the original one, corner shower, spa tub with jets and a built in vanity. The vanity, imho, is ugly as hell. IF I get this place, that’s either getting pulled out or being made into a self (but placing a giant sheet over it). No word back from the agent yet, but the day isn’t done either. If this place doesn’t work out, I have one more fall back, but I have a feeling she’ll have problems with our close date, too.

So far, I have had three offers fall through for some reason or another, all due to excessive drama by the seller’s part. It’s ridiculous. What makes these all worse is I am on a deadline, too. I have to be out of my current place by Nov. 30th. On top of that, I’ll be out of town the final weekend making the middle weekend, of the 17th, the only weekend I will have for moving. In essence, pushing up my required move out day up by 2 weeks.

Oh the drama. When will this end. I’m almost to the point where I’ll just take something to make all this end….

Oct 31, 2006
Filed under: New Place