(Taps)

The deal is dead. At least, for now. We went back and forth with the owners of the house, and before we submitted our “final offer”, we went to look at it again. Unfortunately (for them), it was a rainy day. The basement smelled musty, the gutters were showing their inadequacy, the rotting wood trim had nowhere to hide, and we decided that our most recent offer (we had increased our offer by $75K at this point) was as high as we could go. We began to feel scared about the daunting task we might be about to take on: fixing this neglected house. To be fair, the more anyone looks at any house, the more they will be able to find wrong with it. But when we first saw it, we had stars in our eyes, and the owners should have capitalized on that. There was a time, a few weeks ago, when we would have offered about $25-$50K more than where our final offer ended up. But as our enthusiasm waned, and our feet came back to earth, our desire to negotiate further dissipated as well. I guess that’s why they say, “Strike while the iron is hot”!

The real estate market in town is dead in general, so I would be surprised if they were able to drum up an offer at all between now and the end of the year. One of the sticking points in the negotiation was the closing date. They desired a January 15, 2011 date, while we had asked for March 31, 2011. We are not clear on why they were in such a hurry, considering that they HAD A BUYER WHO WAS WILLING TO PAY A LOT FOR THEIR HOUSE, but we stood our ground and, eventually, they gave in to our desired closing date. However, as far as price, we ended up being about $45,000 apart. Our final number was 10% below the asking price. Most houses here are trading at prices more than 10% below the final asking price, which is usually a reduced price to begin with. The other problem for them was that they agreed to a bum deal with their broker. She required them to have a contract signed on the private sale within one week after the Listing Date in order to avoid a brokerage commission. We received the owner’s final offer the day before the deadline, with a stipulation that we would need to have a contract signed by close of business the next day. Hilarious! Considering that we had not yet agreed to terms, and had not completed a professional inspection of the premises, signing a contract within 24 hours was a completely unreasonable expectation. In the end, the owners admitted that our offer was too low and that they felt they needed more time to test the market. I wrote back that we do understand (because we do – even though we know we are right! Ha!), and wished them the best of luck.

Since then, we have had several chance encounters with them on the street, and it has all been perfectly friendly and charming – there are no hard feelings at all. Unfortunately for them, it has rained for about six days straight, so there have been few (if any) showings of the property). Did I mention that one of my closest friends (a true BFF) lives across the street from them and has been spying regularly? She also offered to park an old beat-up pickup truck on her lawn and throw old beer cans around in order to make the neighborhood appear less than appealing to any potential YUPPIE buyers. What a pal!

What does the future hold? We heard last night from some friends on Wall Street that trading volume is slow – and that more layoffs are looming, even if not the 80,000 predicted by one fairly reliable analyst. Since this town’s real estate values are so closely tied to Wall Street wealth, I would say that’s bad news for anyone trying to sell a house. Will our neighbors get offers? Yes – it is a fabulous neighborhood with many amenities, and the house has good space. But they will get lowball offers, and will have to pay a broker 4% of the sale price. They will end up with less money in their pocket than if they had taken our deal. There is no doubt in my mind, they truly believe, or want to believe, that their house is worth more than it is truly worth. There is nothing wrong with that mentality, unless you are in a hurry to move, and you have no offers. We have not heard the last of them. It is really just a question of “when” we will hear from them again. We will see them on Halloween when my children go up to their door for some candy. And I wonder – will they offer us a trick, or a treat?

Next Chapter...Colonial?

The summer is gone – there is a strong breeze and a chill in the air. The flowers are all but dead, and a friendly caterpillar has made his cocoon under our Japanese Maple tree. It is time for me to emerge from my summer bubble and announce that we have decided not to add onto our house, for a plethora of good reasons.

It all started when we heard that our empty-nested neighbors were putting the word out that they would entertain a private sale of their home over the next couple of years, if anyone were interested. The house, a colonial, is one of the largest on our street (about 2,800 square feet), and sits perched on a hill with a very private wooded backyard. My husband does not love the sloped driveway, but the front yard is perfect for small-scale sledding. It will need quite a bit of renovation as the front steps are crumbling and the interior appears to be completely original. But to us, a renovation project is infinitely more desirable and doable than an addition. Of course, we are not chasing this particular house, and in fact there are several other empty-nester homes on the street that may go to market first. But this one got our juices flowing.

While we have determined that we can make an addition to our Raised ranch work (yes, we revised it again), by simply adding a new kitchen, expanding the dining room, and adding a bedroom and bath downstairs, it does not give us what we truly want out of our house: flow and lack of redundancy. Our enormous downstairs family room was virtually unused all summer. We have separated our daughters into their own bedrooms, so we no longer have a guest/play room upstairs on the main level. And we can see with clarity now that we will want more separation between the public and private areas of the house as these girls grow up. With my aging brain, I continue to go up and downstairs ten times a day because most of our storage is downstairs and I am forever forgetting why I went in either direction/what I was looking for. This can only get worse as I get older!

Besides, moving to an existing house is GREENER. Wouldn’t it be nice not to have to disturb the plant and animal life that live in the earth behind our house? We have a large number of boulders at the very back of our yard that were excavated when the original foundation was dug. We would undoubtedly find more rock in digging a foundation for an addition, and I can only imagine the added expense (and noise, and irritation to our neighbors) of chipping it out.

Another consideration is that I will (hopefully) soon be returning to a regular job, and will have less time to manage a large-scale project. We would have a much easier time managing one project at a time, when we can afford it, to make an existing house perfect again. In the meantime, we have outlined about $20,000 worth of projects that we would tackle immediately to make THIS house perfect before selling or renting it.

I still believe that our addition plan would work for any Raised Ranch. But based on our specific needs, we do not feel it will work for us going forward – at least, not to the extent we would like. This family is entering a new era, in which our kids are older, we spend less but higher quality time together at home, and we are not as willing to compromise when it comes to our house dreams. The next 12 months should be interesting…