Saturday, May 17, 2008

price drop and subsequent offer

So we dropped the price of our house on Monday. We'd been on the market for 3 weeks with a decent amount of activity in terms of showings with 2 to 3 a week, but not a single offer. Now we understand the market in Calgary has slowed significantly, and this is just how things work. So we dropped it by 6 grand in hopes of enticing new buyers. Immediately after the drop we got 2 showings in 2 days, with an offer following the second showing.

The buyer's Realtor, Lynn, presented the offer around 9pm on Wednesday evening. The price they offered was acceptable, but they had a special clause saying that their house had to sell in order for this contract to go through. And that they had until July 15th to sell. They were also only offering a $2000 deposit, which is low compared to the usual $5000. So we counter-offered accepting the price and asking them to drop the clause that they needed to sell their house, and to raise the deposit to $5000. Then we sat around waiting for a reply. And waited. And waited. Eventually we find out that the other Realtor has just left. So our realtor calls her to see what's going on, and Lynn gets in a big huff about how they would never consent to that change in the contract, and was all insulted that we would even suggest such a thing. I'm not sure why she took the insult so personally, as it's just a business deal but... The fact that she just left without giving us a response to our counter-offer annoyed me, as that's really quite rude.

But such is the way of business, so we continue to wait.