Our house has been on the market since Friday, but we did not schedule it for showings until Monday. Over the weekend, Jean called and left a message concerning an interested party from out of town that wanted to see our house on Sunday. We rushed through our preparations and vacated, beginning the tedious process that this week has become.
Because we had to cut short our preparations on Sunday, we never really got to complete them. We’ve had showings of the house every night since then, so there hasn’t been any reprieve. As an example of the trouble this is causing, our air conditioner filter once again requires cleaning, since it has gotten to the point that the air is no longer cooled. This being another hot week, everyone seeing the house will now have to do so in 80+ degree temperatures.
Really, all that is required to fix the problem is cleaning the fliter, which I did last night. But with the house already so hot, it’ll take a while for it to cool off today after putting the dried filters back into the system this morning. And then the A/C service guy is supposed to come to service the thing this afternoon, so it’ll be shut down again. And I’m sure that he’ll cost us another hundred dollars or so.
Worse yet is the effect all this is having on our overall morale. Riley has been spending days over at Nana’s, which he doesn’t mind so much, but too many days over there makes him irritable. He didn’t want to have anything to do with Berta yesterday when she picked him up, showing his displeasure with the arrangement.
And since we’ve had to be out of the house at dinner time (and because making dinner in the house means dinner and cleanup afterwards) Abby is unhappy. She really doesn’t like to eat at restaurants for some reason, or maybe the whole house-selling arrangement has her irritable, but she came really close to a complete meltdown yesterday.
The only saving grace is that last night was a later showing, so the kids got to play in the house with their own toys and wander around outside, which they’ve been deprived of for too long.
As for Berta and I, things are also complicated. Keeping the house clean is a priority, and making time for he showings is important. At the same time, this doesn’t leave any time at all for packing. Our settlement date on the new house is less than a month away. That’s really no time at all.
This leads to the other problem - We’ve received an offer on the house from those initial buyers. The offer isn’t great. It’s $5k less than our range. We should have been more wary of the asking price, I think, since we’re only asking for the least that we wanted for the house. A buyer would assume that there is room to negotiate that price, but I don’t feel willing to haggle too much there, especially considering the potential (as unlikely as it is) that problems requiring monetary compensation would arise during inspection.
In any case, that’s not the real problem. The real problem is that they want to settle on the same date as our new house, or earlier. We were looking forward to a comfortable moving period while our house was being sold. And while we don’t want the sale to go on forever, we would like a fair price and a fair amount of time to actually perform the move.
Jean suggested that we move up the settlement date on our new house, giving us even less time to move. We would need to be nearly completed our packing and moving in just two weeks. If they get the typical ten-day grace period for the home inspection results, then they could cancel the sale (primarily because we wouldn’t agree to adjustments in the price based on the inspection because their offer is so low) after we’ve put all that effort in.
The best feedback we’ve goten yet about the house other than this offer is that the woman that saw it was considering telling her husband about it, and if he liked the idea then they might make an offer maybe if the planets aligned just so.
Berta and I spent a while last night concocting an email to Jean about all of this, and I’m not able to discern yet what the reaction is. Blah.
And so, late nights cleaning things continue, stressing out about selling the house continues, worrying about contracting movers continues, dealing with the disgruntled kids continues…
