RSSThe Big Move: Sold!
July 11, 2012
Johnny Goodman - See all 177 of my articles
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SOLD!
This is the third installment in my series involving the building of our new home.
This past weekend we sold our existing house. It was on the market for about 7 weeks.
The previous two times I have sold homes they have been sold very fast (both in under 20 days). I was getting a little nervous as we had a ton of people look at the home, but had not been able to sell it. A few weeks back we received an offer that that was pretty strange but thought we had it sold…and then at the last minute with negotiating the prospective seller pulled the plug on the deal and then proceeded to start making comments on why they did not want the house in the first place.
Rule #1 of selling a home…Don’t make it personal.
For about 2 days I was pretty ticked off about this first deal falling through. “if you didn’t like these things about my house why did you make an offer in the first place” was my thinking! I will freely admit I was mad. But after some smooth talking by my wife and more reasonable thinking, I figured out that this was likely a bad offer anyway. They had strange need for cash at closing some weird clauses and oddly constructed contingencies of moving into the house and closing on it. In the end it was best that this did not work out at all.
Rule #2 of selling a home – Hey Realtor – Don’t make it personal to the clients!
– Rule #1 in my case could have been avoided altogether if not only the prospective buyers realtor but also my realtor would have NOT mentioned these “personal feelings” at the time the other party decided to not proceed with their offer. All this did was escalate my blood pressure and since they had walked away from their initial offer on our home, it really didn’t matter what they thought about my house anyway.
Rule #3 of Selling a home – Being the Bridesmaid is a GOOD thing!
We had another family that came to our house 2 times in 2 days. They stayed and looked at our place for a LONNNNG time each time they were there. We found out that they ultimately decided to go with another house. Instead of being disappointed, I was excited! Even though we did not get a potential sale, it told me that obviously our house was in the running which meant it was just a matter of time before we found a buyer.
Rule #4 – It happens when you least expect it.
We were going to have an open house on Sunday. We had a showing on Friday and another on Saturday, and had an offer by 3 pm on Saturday afternoon. It was a good offer, near full price and was clean as a whistle. In the end this is all I could have hoped for.
Now my family begins the arduous task of needing to move into an apartment in the interim while our new home is being built. They are breaking ground on our new house as we speak, and it is anticipated to be completed in mid-November. The people buying our home have a closing date with us that is less than a month away!
In the meantime, more of our household contents is off to the storage unit, and the daily necessities such as beds, living room furniture, clothes, pots pans, my sons toys and of course our beloved dog – Max- are off to the pet friendly apartment we will call home for the next 4 ½ months. On the bright side the apartment we are moving into is close to where we live, and has a pool, and a small stream…pool will be good for me.
Until next time, Stay classy Overland Park Kansas.
