TheBanyanTree: Maybe . . .

[Margaret R. Kramer]

With daylight stretching out with each passing day and even though it’s
still chilly, there is a spring lilt in the air, and because of that, we
were bombarded with almost non-stop showings of our house last weekend.
Obviously, the housing market has picked up quite a bit from the winter
doldrums.  We spent most of that showing time at the park, in our car,
sipping hot coffee and reading the newspapers.  I would walk Axel every once
in a while.  Poor Axel seemed quite confused about why he was spending his
days in the back seat of the car.

We managed to get our grocery shopping done during one showing.  There was
no one at our house when we came back, so we quickly snuck the groceries
into the cabinets and the refrigerator before another appointment showed up.

I saw a car pulling up to the For Sale sign and Ray went outside to meet
them.  He brought the group of women into the house as they kept saying, “We
were just driving through the neighborhood . . .”  Ray didn’t realize they
were just driving around looking at houses, and were not one of our showing
appointments!

They had blocked my car in the driveway, so we weren’t able to leave until
Ray was done showing them the house.  Meanwhile, our agent had pulled up
with his clients, who were looking at our house for the second time.  As Ray
was doing his real estate duties, the couple told me that they had signed an
offer that morning to buy our house.  Wow!  But our agent told us that there
was another offer as well.  Two offers after months of our house sitting on
the market!

We agreed to meet our agent at his office, so while he showed the house
again, we went back to the park with dear, patient Axel and tried to recover
from the shock.  We went to our agent’s office and both offers were good,
but one was $480 more than the other and gave us 14 more days to close.  We
went with that offer, even though we really liked the couple who was looking
at our house with our agent.  We signed all the papers, which included sale
pending inspection, and went home.

The inspection went OK.  We need to tune up and certify our furnace, which
is fine.  I have that appointment set up for March 21.  They wanted to move
our hot water heater as well.  You see, this is an owner designed house, and
we’re the second owners.  The house is about 35 years old.  It is a split
level.  I think the owners forgot to leave a space for the hot water heater,
so it ended up in the crawl space set into a 13 inch hole.  The crawl space
does not have a cement floor.  The inspector felt it could be moved to sit
on a cement slab behind the furnace.  Ray measured the size of the hot water
heater and the slab area and it would not fit.  Our furnace’s venting comes
out directly from behind the furnace, so there wouldn’t be any room for the
piping coming from the heater.  Our agent wrote that up and sent it to the
other agent representing the buyers.

We should have heard something yesterday.  Either they would accept that or
not.  I agree with my agent that they would be dumb if the water heater was
going to change their minds about buying the house.  Evidently, they’ve look
at this house several times, so they know its strengths and weaknesses, so a
water heater shouldn’t be a problem.

But until I know for sure, I can’t really do anything.  I would like to look
for houses, and I have a bunch of them we would like to see.  And I would
like to start packing.  I’ve already organized it in my mind on how I want
to approach it.

I’ll call my agent in a little while and find out what’s going on.  Then I’
ll do our taxes.  That administrative detail needs to be taken of before we
do anything else anyway.  But maybe . . .

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at comcast.net

http://www.bpwmn.org
Business and Professional Women of Minnesota

Be careful of your thoughts, they may become words at any moment.
~Iara Gassen