The Vince Files » realtor

We bought a new house!

Vince — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 16:41:29 +0000

Well, everything’s still verbal at this point. We offered, they counter-offered, we countered their counter and they’ve accepted. Our agent is still waiting for the paperwork from the selling agent.

The bidding went like this:

We offer at 92.6% of list price. They counter-offered back at 97.7%. We counter-countered at 94.7% and they’ve accepted. We’re just waiting for paperwork. Anna will accompany our realtor and home inspector next week at the new home.

Timelines are tight, stress is high, moving is a major pain-in-the-a$$ but we’re super happy we got the place. It really shows well and we’re pretty sure the owners took care of the place.

[UPDATE 10/17/2008]: I just stopped by our realtor’s office with the certified cheque for our deposit. Anna and I have signed the addendum to remove subjects after the satisfactory home inspection, mortgage application, and title search. The deal is firm! Just waiting for lawyers to complete the transactions.

[UPDATE 10/22/2008]: We just stopped by our lawyer’s office to sign papers. Wow! That law office is like a well-oiled machine. They had all paperworks ready (in triplicate!) for our signatures. The lawyer split our session into 2 parts: a) the sale of our old home and b) the purchase of our new home. He described every single document we were signing and believe me, there were many. With such tight timelines, I’m hoping everything goes through OK. Fingers are crossed.

Sold!

Vince — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 15:47:58 +0000

Perhaps I blogged too soon about receiving an offer on our place. But I can now say that the buyers have removed their subjects. The deal is now firm and the place is now sold!

We got an offer!

Vince — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 19:46:39 +0000

After 5 months on the market and a really slow summer, we have our first offer.

Offer comes in for 97.7% of our asking price, we countered up to 98.4%, they counter-countered back down to 97.9%. We accepted their offer. We really don’t want to let this one go.

It looks like the buyers are in a similar situation we were in a few years back; two parents with child in an apartment condo. They need to upgrade to more room.

So now, we’re busy talking with our mortgage broker, the bank, and our realtor to help us find a new place. Things are gonna happen real quick, real soon.

We’ve lowered our price

Vince — Sat, 28 Jun 2008 06:14:56 +0000

We’ve lowered our listing price by $10,000 to try to entice an offer from a potential buyer. We’ve been listed about a month with a couple of open houses, some private viewings and no offers yet. This is how the market is these days; many listings are staying on the market longer and longer.

Our updated listing is now on MLXchange and our real estate agent will be following up with people who left their names in our previous open houses to let them know. Hopefully something will come up soon. We’re aiming to sell, and buy another place before our mortgage pre-approval expires.

Open House day

Vince — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 00:01:40 +0000

Today was the big day. We finished our last-minute cleanups before our real estate agent arrived. She had scheduled our open house to be from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. So we took the opportunity to do some Open House hopping ourselves.

Anna plugged in some addresses into our Garmin Nuvi 350 GPS and we were on our way. We stuck strictly to Port Coquitlam with particular emphasis on the Riverwood community. We also stopped at some Open Houses as we stumbled on to them. Time flew quickly and before we knew it, it was time to head back.

When we got back, our real estate agent had a surprised look on her face as if to say, “you should have seen how many people came to look.” She had set up a sign-in sheet for people to sign as they came in and she counted 26 groups of people who came to visit. Wow – 26 groups in a 3-hour span is quite a few people. There’s even a prospective buyer who wants to come back on Tuesday so he/she can bring his/her parents.

Anyways, we’ll see how it goes. Now we just wait for the offers to come in.