Dear Readers,
It’s been a busy few weeks since I poured my heart out to you about the demands from my buyers for ridiculous things. (Read and catch up Working Through My Stress) I apologize that I haven’t gotten back to you as quickly as I wanted to. The days are flying by now and our May 16 closing is speeding towards me like a freight train.
So let me catch you up. After some sleepless nights (funny how my husband sleeps like a baby through all this), we finally reached an agreement with the buyers. Their 4 pages of demands after the inspection added up to around $5o,ooo that they wanted us to pay. Yeah, right. Of course this was not only ridiculous but impossible. Many of my friends said they just wanted to get all they could out of us; other friends thought they wanted to back out of the deal.
We offered to fix the 3 things that we knew needed some work…the banister was wobbly, the front door had a small split, we offered $2000 to paint the deck, and offered an expert to come out to look at the furnace. We also offered one year of buyer’s insurance (I’ll write about this later). These were the items that I thought were necessary to live in the house…well, except the deck paint…strictly cosmetic there.
But my friends were right. They refused that, and just wanted money, to the tune of $10,000. To fix a wobbly banister? Shoot, I’ll do it for $10K! We finally settled for $6,000, with none of the items I offered above included. That $6000 was going to buy my new furniture. Oh, well!
I almost let my stubbornness get in the way. Why should I give them anything more when they were obviously just being greedy. We need the money more than they, I’m sure of that. But I had to calm my headstrong reaction and think rationally. We were lucky to get the offer so quickly, and for close to asking (so I knew they really wanted the house). But I also knew I didn’t want to re-list it, and pay another month, maybe two or three, of mortgage payments. So that’s how I came up with $6000…I added another mortgage payment, the utilities, the upkeep, all the things I would have had to spend on another month of living there. It was worth the cost for us to seal the deal, and they probably knew it.
This has definitely been a journey of more ups and downs than I imagined. But the downs have been balanced by some recent ups. I’ll continue sharing my lessons learned and stories about the “ups”, but first, my moving sale is fast approaching, and then we close on May 16.
Wish me luck! 🙂
