Buying A House or Arm Wrestling

We are trying to buy a house.

We are willing to pay almost the full asking price — knowing the house:

1. Needs a new roof.
2. Is 1/2 the size of our current home but costs about the same.
3. Is in the middle of nowhere.  (It’s so far out there there isn’t even a library in town.)

But so far, all we’ve gotten is an invitation to an ongoing wrestling match and a headache.

When did buying a house turn into as WWW WrestleMania event?

Okay, so the sellers have been left at the altar (settlement table) twice by buyers who couldn’t pony up the cash.  They are feeling a bit burned.  But we’re feeling really, really pissed off, snapping at each other like a couple of terriers because we can’t snap at the seller’s agent or the sellers, themselves.

Over the last couple of weeks, my husband and I have jumped through enough hoops for these people to qualify for a new act at Ringling Brothers circus!

The sellers’ agent has slowed the process down to the pace of a glacier (before global warming) and keeps adding or changing things to queer this deal including delaying paperwork, providing contract copies and financials that are illegible and tossing in new clauses faster than a short order cook flips burgers.

The deal breaker for us came after the owners of house accepted our bid, verbally.  About 90 minutes later, our agent called to tell us that the stipulation to acceptance was that, even if the purchase of our home fell through, we have to buy their house.  If we didn’t agree to that stipulation, they would continue to accept offers on their house right up to the day settlement.

I’ve never heard of such a stipulation and wonder why anyone – seller or the other realtor — would think we would put ourselves in such a position of risk.  I’m not sure of the ethics of the other realtor but I am real sure of the potential harm of this clause.  For us, it was  a lose-lose.

Our answer?  “No. Thank you.”

The next communication was that they would accept our proposal but we could not move anything into the garage early, as previously agreed to. We would have to wait until after settlement.

We are moving out of a house  we’ve lived in for 19 years.  This house has 4 bedrooms, two offices and a three car garage and we are expected to be out by mid-day on June 22nd, settle on the new house same afternoon and unload the truck that evening.

We couldn’t do that when we were in our 30’s.  Now, in our 60’s, that’s an order, too tall.

Our answer? “No. Thank you.”

The sellers’ agent said, “Okay, we can get early access to the garage, only.”  However, if the deal fell through for any reason, we would have to have all of our property out of the garage by midnight, June 22nd.  Really?  Another order, too tall.

So, here we are, 20 days away from having to vacate our current property and homeless.  And bloody tired of being jerked around by the sellers, their agent or both.

We really do need to find a house, now.

That said, this will be our last home…the one we leave, “…feet first” as my brother once said.  So, we will not be rushed.  We will store everything if we have to, including the classic cars and my motorheads’ garage full of stuff.  We will continue to look for that place where we will spend the last of our golden years, together.

Oh, and we will curse the name of the sellers, their realtor and their heirs and assignees to that special place in purgatory where they can see the house they want but they cannot buy it….no matter what deal they offer the devil.