Sold. Now for the next steps

It wasn’t without last-minute drama, but the papers are signed and look at what I found outside when I went for my bike ride this morning:

So here’s what happened yesterday. The inspection went ahead, and the fellow was here for about two hours. Then he was off and the rest of our day resumed. Tammy took the kids to karate at 3, and I kept working until 5. Sometime after 5, Tammy texted me: “Geez I think they’re gonna make us sweat until midnight. :-)” Translation: if it was a simple matter of dropping the conditions off of the offer, why drag it out? It could be that they were working, or it could be that they were debating their next step.

Because as it turned out, there were two issues found in the inspection: one was that the hot water heater at 10 years old is due for replacement, and the other was that the new door to the garage isn’t to code. It needs to be replaced with a self-closing steel door like the old door. Big deal, right? That’s all? Nope. Tammi got a call from their realtor that the buyers were considering asking for a $2000 price drop to cover the problems. Let’s just say that Tammi was pretty much beside herself and as I commented earlier:

So here’s the kicker: unsolicited, one of the realtors representing some of our other potential buyers called Tammi today asking about our house and whether or not the deal had closed. That, combined with the number of showings in the last week and a half meant that Tammi shot back at the buyer’s realtor: “Are your clients *sure* they want to open this up again?”

I relayed all this to Tammy, and let’s just say she was not a calm, peaceful person when she arrived home with the kids. She used some words that she doesn’t normally and was ready to walk away and try again with different people.

Apparently Tammi’s words were enough. The buyers didn’t back down entirely, but they agreed to take the conditions off if we left a $200 cheque on closing to cover the replacement door. Their realtor is also providing them with $300 from her pocket to just shut them up and get the deal done. Another condition was that they wanted access to the house twice between now and closing to get contractors in for measuring and planning.

So all this went down just before 10 o’clock last night. Tammi took the lock box off the house (but is keeping the key until the sale, and offered to keep an eye on the cats during our trip to Calgary) and put up the Sold sign. I bought Tammy and I our plane tickets and reserved a rental car. The hotel was already reserved. We let Jeff and Sasha know about the finalization, so they know. Tammy let the Calgary realtor (Monika) know about a dozen properties we are interested in seeing. I have let Brian and Jim know at work, and they are enthusiastic. This is from Jim (V.P. of Sales and Services):

Yaaa Hoooooooo. Calgary speak for nice ……..

One kind of stress has now been replaced by another. Time to create a monster To Do list.