Response To Light

Yesterday, I officially heard what others were whispering - I have been promoted to Team Lead.

In an effort not to drag things out, I will say that Niles looked at the house for two hours and then had a decision to make. Could he envision his family living here? Both Lynne and I went out of our way to make sure he didn’t feel any pressure about deciding that night. “Go home and think about it,” we advised. However I think in his mind he realized

1) The market is so tight that if he decided to think about it there was every chance he could come back tomorrow and it would be sold.

2) The house, while not being perfect (no two car garage, 20 Extra minutes of driving to get to the city), was a great buy.

3) Despite the fact that he hadn’t had a chance to look at other houses, there were not many five bedroom houses in that price range.

So Lynne and I gave him his space, let him walk around the house alone, and in the end he said, “I want this to be our new home. Sold!”

In addition to being happy about selling house, I think we are really happy with the people buying it. I think one of the negatives about buying our new house is that the sellers have no way of knowing the kind of people that will be moving in and taking care of their home. In our case, we feel like the house we worked so hard to make a home is going to people that will appreciate what we have done. When Niles was here, if felt less like a buyer and seller relationship than company coming over for dinner.

Now if only we can get all of the financing details done before Douglas sells the new house from under us!

So we put in an offer on a house and now we have to…..you guessed it — sell our house. When the original counter offer came back, the sellers wanted us to sell our home via a realtor to show “we were serious” about selling our home. We kindly replied back, “No thank you.” Several of our friends have sold their house via WeList.com and we believed that we could do the same. As you can see in the Gallery section of the site, we have made a ton of improvements to the house over the last year. “The house will sell itself,” we both thought. The one thing we did argue over is what price to list the house at. After looking at what was available in Irricana, Airdrie, & Beiseker, we settled on $220,000. To her credit, Lynne thought we should list for more, but I didn’t want to lose the other house trying to “get every dollar”.

On Wednesday night we placed the add on WeList. On Thursday the house showed up online and then the phone calls started to come in.

Our initial plan was to get the house “showroom ready” Friday night and Saturday morning. Friday night at around 6:00PM we started getting a flurry of calls. First from a realtor stating she was representing a family that had already sold their house and was interested in moving in immediately. Those are good buying signals. Next a woman called inquiring about the house and wondering about possession dates. She was in Ontario but her husband was working in Calgary. She wanted to know when her husband could look at the property. Finally at roughly 7:00PM, the husband called to ask if he could visit the house that night.

“My wife and I have only started cleaning the house.” I said as I looked around the house in disarray.

“I honestly don’t care. I am sure that I can get a good sense of the house even if things are a bit messy.”

A bit messy…”That may be true but if you come by now, I don’t think you will see the full value of the house in the state it is currently in.” I explained.

Nils was not to be deterred. “Look,” he said. “I had appointments to see three houses over the next couple of days. My realtor just called me back and said they are all conditionally sold. All I want is the opportunity to be first in line on a great property. Please just give me a chance to come and take a look. ”

I must admit to being torn. Lynne and I had missed out on a prime property by a day. We were devestated and honestly all of the houses we looked at afterward, paled in comparison. However, we were just starting to get the house together and I didn’t want to kill myself (or Lynne) trying to get the house cleaned. We were really enjoying the evening going at our own pace. After a moment or two of thought I said, “Okay. Why don’t you come take a look.”

Lynne’s face drained of color as those words erupted from my mouth. I could see the panic in her eyes and then a quick flash of anger. “Let’s just get done what we can and not worry about the rest.” I stated. So we both dug in and started aggressively working on the house. I cleaned up my computer room and the bathroom upstairs as well as vacuumed upstairs. Lynne finished off the kitchen and bedroom as well as straightened up the downstairs. We both cleaned up the boys rooms. By the time Nils arrived the house looked great. Sweet scented candles were burning in all of the rooms, flowers were strategically placed throughout the house giving each room a punch of color, and all of the clutter was organized (or hidden).

When Nils rang the bell, I was just putting away the vacuum cleaner. A strong handshake and hello later, we invited him in.

Part II coming soon.