Tuesday, June 10, 2014

Good morning crew,

Talk about a stressful weekend. The wife and I managed to lose yet another house (two other houses, actually), but this time we weren't out bid by another buyer, rather by the seller.

I still have a hard time wrapping myself around how fast this home-buying thing moves. When I bought my SUV eight years ago it took me an entire week to come to a buying decision, and that was for a $29,000 truck. Now I have to make a decision on a purchase seven times more expensive, on something that I will likely have 5 times as long, and I have to do it in hours, not days.

Sunday afternoon, after looking at several houses and finding a couple we actually liked, we decided to pull the trigger on a spacious, rambling, frame ranch that had been completely renovated. It was out of our price range, but we figured it wouldn't hurt to throw them a low-ball bid and see what would happen.

So we sent them an offer $20k below their asking price. I thought it would take at least a day for the seller to look over the contract and come up with an answer, but within an hour they came back with a counter offer that was $10k over our offer.

So we went back to look at the house again. Standing there in the beautifully remodeled kitchen and kicking things over with the realtor I could see that the wife was really liking the place, so despite my better judgment we agreed to counter again with $5k under THEIR counter offer.

I thought we were going to have to amend the original contract but the realtor just did it via text message right there from her phone.

At that point I really thought we were going to be able to go home and stew over our decision over dinner and a bottle of wine, but just as we were about to walk out of the door ten minutes later the realtor got a text back; this time for $7k over the original price.

At that point I wasn't going to be nickel-and-dimed into going broke on a house I really didn't want in the first place, so I just said forget it. I told the realtor we would make a bid on the back-up house we saw earlier that morning and the wife and I both liked.

She whipped her phone out and spent a couple minutes in concentrated typing before looking up and giving us a sympathetic little shake of her head.

"I'm sorry," she said. "That house sold a couple hours ago."

Laugh it up,

Joe

joe@gophercentral.com

P.S. Did you miss an issue? You can read every issue from the Gophercentral library of newsletters on our exhaustive archives page. Thousands of issues, all of your favorite publications in chronological order. You can read AND comment. Just click GopherArchives

***
"Last week a 13-year-old girl became the youngest female to climb Mount Everest. She didn't mean to. She was just texting her friend and the next thing she knew she was on top of Mount Everest." -Conan O'Brien

***
"There are rumors that Robert Pattinson from the 'Twilight' movies may be the next Indiana Jones. If there is one thing I want with my rugged action heroes, it's a little bit of sparkle!" -Craig Ferguson

***
"The new Tom Cruise movie opens today. It's called 'Edge of Tomorrow.' Tom Cruise is an intergalactic warrior fighting to save our planet from aliens. I have no idea who he plays in the movie." -Craig Ferguson

***
A man learned shortly before quitting time that he had to attend a meeting. He tried unsuccessfully to locate his car-pool members to let them know that he would not be leaving with them.

Hastily he scribbled a message to one fellow and left it on his desk: "I have a last-minute meeting. Leave without me. Dave."

At 7:00 p.m., the man stopped at his desk and found this note: "Meet us at the bar and grill across the street. You drove, you idiot."


*-------------- Guaranteed to Roll Your Eyes --------------*
I graduated from a private school that I didn't like much. Once I was out of there, I had no particular desire to ever contribute to their latest fund drive or athletic events.

Sure enough, Alumni Affairs staff called my folks, got my current number and tracked me down. 'So, what have you been doing with yourself?' the perky alumnus asked.

I responded, "Oh, not a lot. Just stealing cars and selling drugs." They've never called back.