I am Norman

Saturday, June 09, 2007

Norman: Does not play well with others

"Does not play well with others"

I saw that on a t-shirt the other day and decided that I must have it.

Anyone wanna buy it for me?

See, I'm in an Ultra-Pissy mood. We just got an offer on our house. Well - I use the term "offer" lightly here. It was downright insulting. If I may be so blunt as to post some stats on my house....I will!

We are selling our house for $169,900. That's REDUCED from our original price of $175K. We had to reduce it because of some stupid thing called a housing bubble or some other nonsense like that.

Now - I know you guys over in Virginia are choking on your tongues (and even some of you California peeps as well)... but hey - houses are cheap like this in Texas. However - this is Amarillo, and I've always been surprised that housing is so expensive in this town. But yep...that's a pretty penny for a house here. (For comparison...one of my friends that live in Wash. DC came and looked at it, and said that this same house in DC would go for $400K....easy)

We got an offer today for $160K. That's TERRIBLE! There are 6 other houses for sale on our block alone. We're the largest one, and the others are all asking anywhere from $190K to $250K. The only difference with our house and theirs is we do NOT have granite countertops in our kitchen. Otherwise, they are all asking a full $10 more per square foot than we are.

So because this is a small town, we found out pretty quickly that the people who want to steal our house from us at that price are downsizing from their current 3500sq ft house (we have 2300 sq feet) and have lived at their current house for 20 years.

They would be able to pay us CASH for our house with what they are offering us. They think they can low-ball us!!! PISSES ME OFF!

So I called the realtor and made a counter offer. I offered to LET them purchase it from me for $175,000 - my original asking price.

I don't think we'll have sold the house then.

Sucks to be me right now. Hey!! Here's a thought! You think I can send the ol' Magical Hippopotamus over to their house for a visit!?

posted by Norman at 12:15 PM

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5 Comments:

At Saturday, June 09, 2007 4:58:00 PM, RVVagabond

Better still, let the wee ghostie ride the Magical Hippopotamus over for a true double-whammy!

Had to laugh at the "pisses me off" as that's my mom's new mantra--you have to say it with a very emphatic nod of the head as you say it, though.
At Saturday, June 09, 2007 5:31:00 PM, Leonesse

Norm..
Try having the buyers have someone show up for a termite inspection on the DAY we were supposed to close. They threatened to back out over and over before that even! It was so frustrating I couldn't eat for days. And then almost getting heat stroke because it was in AZ in 120 degree heat, no less. We were frantically moving because we didn't take out too much stuff ahead of time with the threats of backing out. ...sigh....

In other words.. I feel for you.
...passes a margarita...
At Sunday, June 10, 2007 6:37:00 AM, Kim

Aw Norman - I feel your pain. We sold our house in the DFW area 2 years ago and the guy low-balled us telling us there were two other models like ours for sale in the neighborhood. Yeah, ours was an interior one that didn't back up to the FM road......ours was tucked nicely in the neighborhood and we had put $10k into it. We countered just so we didn't have to bring money to closing we made him absorb it all and we only walked away w/ $400. It was awful, it was a great house and was in GREAT condition.

Selling a house sucks and I hope you get a good offer. You never know, maybe those people will take the offer knowing they were trying to steal it from you in the first place!
At Monday, June 11, 2007 5:37:00 AM, Lisa

You know what it sounds like to me? I think they're trying to lowball you because your realtor made you lower the price. If your house is truly the same as the others in the neighborhood going for much more, they probably think something's wrong with it. Put the price back up to $175K and leave it there. You shouldn't have to settle to make someone else happy! Sheesh!!
At Tuesday, June 12, 2007 3:27:00 AM, Dari

life is always like that Norma, people wanna always to digrade things and try to take them the easy way; I really know how you feel.
I wish I was moving to "whtever it is" where you are living then I would had offered you 275K; after all it is where Norma had lived and "one day" people from all over the world will be visiting the house (lol). Really I hope you will get what you want for it. Good selling