Blergh (or, House Sale Fail)

The good news: you guys are all sorts of sweet and nice, with your kind congratulations on the super quick offer we got on our house!

The bad news: within a few hours of writing that post announcing our crazy fast sale, our buyer withdrew his offer (boo, hiss!).

Maybe we’re being paranoid, but we have developed an elaborate and sinister theory about the whole ordeal, as one does. (And our realtor agrees with our theory, which is moderately comforting.)

The buyer was an investor looking for properties to buy and use as rentals. He wasn’t working with a realtor, but was just calling up listing agents on properties he wanted to see. He made a few weird comments about our place to our realtor, but then made a pretty fantastic offer (the sort that you don’t bother to counter, you just eagerly accept). Then 4 days later, with no warning and before we’ve even reached the point of inspections and due diligence and all that fun, he cancels his offer out of the blue.

Our sinister theory: we think he went around, making fantastic offers on every property that he thought might be a good fit for him (all without using an agent, because a realtor would never let him get away with this nonsense), effectively tying them up so that they were under contract and couldn’t be acted on by other potential buyers.

Then he took the weekend to sit around, deliberate over them, scratch his butt and be a basic jacka$$, and make a final decision on which one he liked best . . . then withdrew his offers on all the houses that didn’t make the cut. And all this, of course, before meeting the deadline for handing over his earnest money, so we are just left high and dry. Our house was under contract—and missing out on showings!—during quite a few critical early days on the market while he basically ‘reserved’ anything he thought looked interesting, then backed out of.

Maybe we’re totally wrong and being overly paranoid about it. But whatever happened on his end, it was super frustrating for us, I’m totally ticked about it, and Liz Lemon expresses my annoyance perfectly (<—go ahead and watch that video, and picture me over here saying eeeeverything from seconds 26-34 in particular).

So we’re back to showings, and in case you did not know, selling totally blows.

But in other house-related news, Forrest has presented his list of demands reasonable requests for our next place.

In no particular order, His Highness humbly requests that our next home be:

- Green. (“On the outside?” “Yes. Green on the outside. AND on the inside. Green all over. Green in every place. It needs to ALL be green.”)

- Has a splash pad . . . inside.

- Has a swing and slide . . . inside.

- Comes fully stocked with amazing toys.

- Especially Legos.

- Especially Lego Friends.

- Grandma lives there.

- I can live there, but preferably not. Just Forrest and Grandma would be ideal.

 

So I think we shouldn’t have any trouble finding a perfect fit.