Action on the Condo

The 4 princesses (my nieces), my brother and I converged on my parents place for the weekend. Mom made a super sized batch of her beloved tacos. Two supermarkets were checked, and it's been determined that "hot" Taco Sauce is extinct. All we're left with is medium and mild.

Most of the weekend was spent helping CuzJoe prepare his farm house for sale. I got to re-confirm that I really do enjoy house painting, and were there enough money in it, perhaps that would be my next career.

Having nearly started my nap prematurely going 80 on the NJ Tpk, I arrived home exhausted. I've now been home two hours and I am no longer tired...

My condo has been on the market for 4 weeks now, and I am close to lowering the asking price from 415K to 399K. I was pleased to see that I arrived home at the exact time a couple was coming to see my condo. As they walked around, it was nice to overhear they were impressed.

Shortly they left. I threw my unpacked bags in the corner, pulled the blanket out of the wood chest, plopped into my recliner, slid it awlllll the way back, found golf on the TV, sat back up and ran to find the ringing phone. My realtor, Phil, called to tell me he had just gotten an offer from a couple who came to see the place twice last week. “It’s a low ball offer,” he said. “Mumbo jumbo, mumbo jumbo realtor speak,” he added. Finally, “The offer is 366K.”

I paid 168K for it 8 years a go. Nice real estate market, but still way too low of an offer. We decided to counter offer 400K, see what they do, expect them only to budge up their offer, and then expect it to generally end there. Hey, pretty exciting. At least I got an offer. Quick call to tell Mom, then back in the chair, un-pause the golf, start to relax, blanket tight, then dart the hand to the ringing phone.

“Hey we work pretty fast here. The couple is going away Monday to Wednesday…they countered 381K right away,” Phil spat out. I quickly decided that they were approaching my ballpark, and this might be an interesting game. 395K was our counter. Just yesterday, I was thinking that with the lower asking price of 399K, I’d be dropping down to expecting 385K. Hey, perhaps today I could get an offer that I’d accept.

After another quick call to Mom, I was getting a little excited. Little chance of napping right now, so I started this here blog post. By the time I wrote above, “The offer is 366K”, they came back with 390K. That number works for me.

Before saying “Yes”, I decided to take a breather, call Mom a third time and get a family (Mom, Dad, Bro) consensus for approval. I also was making sure that the next course of events that Phil had described were Kosher…such as our ability to accept a higher offer from one of the 3 couples that are seeing the place today should they come in with one. Or maybe even start a bidding war.

So, all that bringing us right up to present, I am now going to end this blog, pick up the phone, call Phil, and say: “Phil, accept the offer.” I’m not feeling like a nap is coming on any time soon.

UPDATE: At 6:30PM, I got a call from Phil saying that he has another potential buyer, and I should expect a new offer probably later tonight! If the new bid is higher, we will let the original bidder know that we got a higher offer, and that we would like to have Final bids by each made before some pre-determined time, maybe Tuesday at 5PM.