I have now purged the dust and grime from corners of my home that have not seen the light of day or swipe of the cloth since we moved in over seven years ago. I think I'm suffering from extreme exposure to paint fumes, because I find myself drawn to staying in my little house and not selling at all. Who knew that all I needed was to do a little aggressive cleaning?
The house was officially placed for sale this morning. We received our first inquiry just 20 minutes after placing the signs in the front yard. Let's hope that is a good indication of the interest yet to come.
We also placed a bid on the new house today, and I became a little miffed. When we told the realtor our opening bid price, she and her husband both looked up and made a sour face. We were then promptly informed that our offer was too low to even bother writing up, and that we were being insulting. Granted, we started the bidding out low, as to leave room for negotiation, but we didn't start that low. The realtor then informed us that "...the property has so much potential and there has been a lot of activity and interest in it. You need to up your offer or you will be offending the seller. Besides, we both know that you like the property and that you want it. There isn't any reason to play games. If I give them these numbers, they will walk away laughing."
My husband and I are bargainers. We like the thrill of the search, and enjoy (and frankly who doesn't) getting a good deal, especially on something we want very badly. Now, I understand that it is this woman's job to get a good price for the seller, as this is what she is being paid for, and I understand that the higher the price that she sells for the bigger her own cut. What I am amazed with is the speed with which this woman went from "nice and helpful" to "evil cow who can't hide the malicious gleam in her eye" the minute that we made it clear that we were not naive first-time buyers. The whole point is to negotiate when buying an older home. That's half of the fun. She was having none of it and would not even let us make an offer until we raised our opening bid another $10,000. I'm beginning to think that this is not the home for us.
But the bid went in and we are waiting to hear from the sellers. The "lovely" realtor could also not refrain from telling us that there was "no way the seller would accept this offer" so we had better be ready to come a little closer to the asking price. I'm ready to pull out of the deal, just from dealing with their representative.
Oh well, just think of all of the other lovely houses out there just waiting to be found!
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4 comments:
Ugh...don't even get me started on some realtors. My hubby and I had one who did similar things to us. She would even lie, telling us that other bids were being placed and that if we wanted the house, we had to up it. She even told us we were outbid and to bid again. Well, on one particular house that was a piece of junk, we refused to bid any higher. She told us we were outbid, so we just fired her and found a mobile home instead.
Come to find out, that house never sold! There weren't any higher bids! It took another year and several other realtors before that house finally sold!
Stand firm. Don't let realtors rope you in. They're just trying to up their take-home percentage.
The funny thing is that hubby encourages me to become a realtor some day. :)
I get a huge knot in my stomach with a huge case diaherria soon to follow just thinking about buying and selling houses. Why, oh why, did the realtor add cruel digs of her own when, "I'll pass these numbers along to the owners." would suffice?
And, BTW, though the realtor took all her commission, I sold our last house. When someone would drive by slowly or stop, I'd say, "Come on in and have a look. You can call my or your realtor if you like the insides too." I think it sold to the third couple I showed it to... My realtor showed it a few times too.
Hang in there. There is most definitely a home for you...I promise.
My husband is not one to get mad easily but when we bought our home he was actually yelling at the realtor at his work. "You are getting paid thousands of dollars to put a piece of paper in the fax machine!" We did all the searching online, found the house on our own, the only thing he did was submit our bid.
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