Finally, an offfer

Jason and I had decided that it was time to move east-- house sold or not sold, jobs or no jobs. If we wanted to be employed in Boston before January, we would need to be out there by September. We asked our realtor for the name of a gardener who we could trust to take care of the yard after we were gone. I told the people at work that I would be leaving by early September. We are fortunate that we can stay at my parents' place when we get out east. They will be in Ireland for half of September and then leave for Florida in October. We will have a place to stay and a car to drive. Worst case scenario, I would pull money out of the equity line and make house payments with that. Not ideal, but certainly not the first time that it had been done.

Last Sunday it was the full court press to sell the house. I was at the Pride Festival working the neighborhood booth to sign people up for the tour of homes and hand out fliers for houses for sale in the neighborhood. Jason was home and attentive enough to notice some people looking at the fliers and the for sale sign. He invited them in to look at the house. They liked what they saw, especially the mother who made comments to her daughter in Spanish not knowing that Jason understood. When they left, the mother made a point of saying to Jason in English how much she liked the house.

You have to understand. Since we put the house on the market two months ago, at least five other houses have gone on the market. Based on last year's sales, that was more than a year of inventory, and fewer houses will be sold this year than last. To have someone come and look at the house and say good things was huge.

Tuesday our realtor Lori called me at work to say that there had been an offer on the house. It was the people who Jason had invited in on Sunday. The offer was low, but Lori wanted to get together as soon as possible to discuss the offer. A few hours later, the plot thickened. A realtor who had previewed the house on Friday wanted to bring his client by Tuesday afternoon.

Lori came by Tuesday night to discuss the offer. The offer had come in Monday night after the close of business. The person making the offer, Sandra, was asking for a response by Tuesday at 6:00 PM. As we were meeting with Lori at 7:00 PM, Sandra was going to have to wait for her response. There was still one person who had looked at the house twice. There was the person who the realtor had brought by earlier that day. There was also the tour of homes on Sunday. We accepted the offer with the option to accept another offer within three days of Sandra accepting our offer. Her offer was low (and her realtor would have been doing her a disservice if she did not tell Sandra to put in a low bid), but her finances were all in line, and she was a teacher. She wanted to close by August 31, before classes started. She had only taken a day to get in an offer, and she was serious about wanting to expedite the process. She had also made an offer too late on another house and lost it. She had friends in the neighborhood. All of the information indicated that an offer that she made would likely go through. Her realtor was also unhappy about the contingency that we would be able to accept other offers.

Lori spent the next day on the phone trying to figure out if there were any more offers waiting to happen. As it turned out, there were not. By the end of the day, we removed our contingency and sent our counter offer. Sandra's realtor initially told Lori that she would be meeting with Sandra either late Wednesday or early Thursday. Lori called Thursday morning to say that Sandra would not be meeting with her realtor until Thursday evening. Needless to say, the day dragged on endlessly. An offer arrived after the close of business, so we would have to wait until Friday morning to find out what the details were.

Lori called Friday morning with the good news. The counter offer was higher than we had expected, and the close was still going to be on August 31. Jason and I were both home packing to head off to Vegas for the night to go see Ka, one of the many Cirque du Soleil shows that are out there. We stopped by her office on the way out, looked at a calendar to lay out all of the important dates, signed the paperwork, and took off to Vegas. Needless to say I spent all 5 hours of the drive making mental lists of all of the things that would need to happen between that day and the end of the month. In California, the buyer gets 16 days to rescind the offer for no reason. That would bring us to August 20. We would have to have the house tented for termites and inspected before escrow could close. That takes three days, so we would need to be out by about August 26. That would mean that I could barely give two weeks notice at work, but they have known for a while that I am leaving.

At this point, the schedule looks like I will be done August 24. I will get everything ready to have the house fumigated which will be done on August 29. After the fumigation, we will put the rest of what is left in the house in one of those PODS containers so that we can ship it, store it out east, and move it to our final desination when we buy a house out east without having to unpack or pack in between. We will be crashing with friends out here until about Labor day. Seems to be silly to not allocate a few days in the event that close is pushed off a day or two.

That is all of the information that there is to share at this point. I will be sailing Wednesday, climbing on Saturday, and helping some friends to move on Sunday. The job hunt continues. I am feeling much more settled now that the house sale seems to have fallen into place. The thought of a house payment with no income was a bit too much to tolerate.

We will try to keep the blog updated even if we are bad about email, so check here if you do not hear from us otherwise.