January 8, 2011

It’s always darkest before the dawn, but you can always turn on the lights

So when I last updated my blog, I was going to mention that I had sold my house.  I believe I mentioned an offer that I received on Christmas Eve, but I'm not referring to that.  That offer met a quick death. They came in at a ridiculous $15,000 below asking, I countered pretty aggressively to show that I was serious, and they never came back. I should have known from the low ball offer they were wasting my time.

However less than a week later my agent called with another offer. Yippie !!  We arranged for him to come over the following evening to present it, and in that time span yet another offer came in ... double yippie !!!  I was now in a multiple offer situation which is just about the best thing a seller can ask for.  The selling agent informs the buying agents that they are now competing, and this usually prompts them to up the ante, and up the ante they did.

One of the offers came in at less than $2,000 under asking. They waived the home inspection condition, leaving the offer conditional only on financing, and as per their agent, they had already been pre-approved by a major bank. Sweet :)

I wisely accepted the offer as is without a sign back. Closing was the end of March which gave me plenty of time to figure out where I might want to live. Considering I haven't even started looking yet, the more time the better.  They even asked for just 3 banking days to secure their financing; normally this is 5-10 banking days ... these buyers were confident and motivated.  

On banking day 2, I updated my blog and talked about resolutions. I was going to add a blurb at the end mentioning the sale, after all, the purpose of my blog is to verbalize my career change plans and the steps I'm taking to realize my dream. Selling my house - definitely related. New Year's Resolutions?  Not so much.

I started to write about it, then quickly hit the delete key. Superstition I guess, perhaps from years of being a hockey fan. Hockey fans can be almost as superstitious as the players themselves. When I'm watching my Wings I have little rituals I follow, you know, just in case. The logic part of my brain tells me I'm an idiot ... will my team actually lose the game because I didn't update my BBM status with a  "Go Wings Go" just prior to game time?  Are the players sitting in the dressing room shouting 'dammit Tina, hurry up, we can't win without you'. I'm gonna say not likely. However the smaller yet overpowering irrational part of my brain takes over and I follow my rituals just the same, to save the team of course.

So I hit the delete key because I didn't want to jinx it. I figured if I blurted out in my blog about my house sale before it was final, then something bad would happen and my dream offer would die. This thinking flies in the face of everything I have been preaching here and attempting to practice in life.  The Law of Attraction tells you that whatever you think you attract, so even if you think you don't want something, you’re thinking about that “don’t want”, and that’s what you’ll get.  So if you keep thinking something like "I don't want to get sick", then you're gonna get sick. Instead you should reflect on how good and healthy you feel, and that's what you will get. Like attracts like.

However old habits die hard and I let superstition reign. And guess what happened?  The deal died.  I won't go into the details, but even though they were pre-approved, they couldn’t get financing. 

FFFFFUUUUUCCCCCKKKKK !!!!!

I was heartbroken. Everything about this deal was perfect; the price, the closing ... I even met the couple and really liked them. Not that it matters, but I did - I was excited for them. For the next 24 hours I fell hard, back into a state of depression. I felt like I was back to square one again :( 

My agent informed me that we'd open my house up to showings again, lovely.  Action started quickly and the very next day the office called with 2 showings booked. Well kudos to my agent, the first call he made after informing me of the bad news was to the other agent; the one who had lost out on the multiple offer bidding war. His clients had not bought and were still interested. That was appointment number one; they wanted to come back for another look.

They looked, they saw, they offered !!  Yesterday my agent presented an offer from them.  Of course it wasn't as good as the other offer when they had some competition, but it was still pretty damn good. It only went back once and they accepted, so once again I have a confirmed deal, with a condition. This buyer has actually waived financing which is pretty amazing; this is the most common condition to accompany a deal. The second most common condition is a home inspection, and that one remains. They have 5 banking days (which expires next Thursday) to have the home inspection completed, reported and to waive the condition.

Since I let irrational thinking invade my brain the first time by refusing to vocalize the offer and that backfired, I decided to blog about this one.  Do the opposite ... it worked for George Costanza; let's hope it works for me :)

And as per The Law of Attraction, I'm sending out positive thoughts to the universe ... on or before January 13, 2011, I will have sold my house !!!

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