The Mighty Roller Coaster

That's what we seem to be on right now. I hate roller coasters. ;-) Unfortunately, I have nothing to blog about aside from the house thing, so here we go again. ~sigh~ If you're sick of this, don't feel obligated to read any further because I'm serious--it's all I have to talk about!

We went into Jason's office Monday afternoon to look at the TWO offers on the house. That's right, we had one come in Sunday afternoon and another Monday. Sounds promising, right??? The first offer was a FULL ASKING PRICE offer--they were willing to pay top dollar and didn't ask for anything special at all. Catch: they can't buy it until they sell their own house. The second offer was 10K less than our asking price, the woman wanted lots of things included: the fridge, the washer and dryer, the tv, the air conditioner in the office, and the soda fountain. AND she wanted us to pay lots of fees that are customary for the buyer to pay, not the seller--the biggest of which was $2,000 all by itself. BUT... we would close on the house soon and be in Alabama one month from now. We told Jason we needed to pray about it over night.

Yesterday we went back into town to meet with Jason again. We chose to let the top dollar offer sit and we'd make a move on the second offer. We felt very confident it was the right thing to do. We are so anxious to sell and get to where we're supposed to be, so we made only very small changes. We told the lady we couldn't give her the soda fountain (it's already spoken for and no longer ours to give away), but told her we'd throw in the freezer instead. We're just nice like that. Besides, James hates moving freezers. ;-) We agreed to pay some of her fees that she'd asked us to cover for her, but declined to pay the $2,000 one and asked that she pay that herself. We thought we were being soooooooo generous and she'd have to be CRAZY to turn it down.

She's crazy. ;-)

She was highly upset about our counteroffer and just couldn't believe the way we were trying to "nickel and dime" her. Hu?! She was the one who asked for everything INCLUDING the kitchen sink! (Ha!) I'm surprised she didn't want all of the furniture and wall decor thrown in. But we were the ones nickeling and diming her??? Jason, the Wonder Realtor, could tell that we were $2,000 away from a done deal and went to work on it. He made several calls at about 9:00 last night, including the owner of the loan company and got that $2,000 fee reduced to $1,000. We had been praying hard for God to give us an answer. When Jason called with that info James said that we'd pay that fee, too. So the lady is getting everything she wants, except we traded out the soda fountain for a freezer. That oughta make her happy, right?

Not necessarily.

She had until noon today to respond to our counteroffer. This morning Jason called and said she wanted to come and look at the house one more time. ~sigh~ I'm so tired of this! We got it all cleaned up again and James took the kids and left. James and I both felt like maybe I should stay at the house this time, so I did. I really prayed ahead of time that God would help me to set aside my feelings and emotions of frustration (there were plenty of them! Ha!) and that He would love her through me. I keep reminding myself that there are souls involved in everything we do in this life, buying and selling houses included.

She was surprisingly nice when they got here and I was sure that I was, too. I told her that I was sorry about the extra stress that I know everyone had been feeling the past couple of days--on both sides of the issue--and that we just really want what's best for everybody. Whether she is the one to buy this house or not, we just want everybody to be happy with whatever decision is reached. We want what God wants for ALL of us. She acted like she really appreciated that and shared that she's just scared--this is a big investment. It is. We understand that. ANYWAY...

I could ramble on forever about this--there have been sooooooo many conversations flying back and forth between our realtor and hers and septic inspectors and environmental agencies and you name it--it just doesn't seem to be coming to an end.

This lady and her realtor have determined how much our house is worth according to the square footage of the houses that have sold in this area in the past year. What they come up with is $8,000 less than what she offered, and $18,000 less than our asking price--which has already been reduced considerably from our original price. Of course, their estimate doesn't take into account the fact that our house is log sided, has a finished office with electric out back, a nice storage shed in addition to that, a fountain and pond, a great view, etc., BESIDES the fact that our house is in immaculate condition and a lot of the other stuff that has sold has been anything but that. One thing that hurts us is the Oak Hill monstrosity. We've always called it that. It's a HUGE house (3,000+ sq. ft.) that we looked at when we moved here. It was foreclosed on and the bank owned it for a few years, and it finally sold this past year for an insanely low price compared to what it would be worth it weren't completely trashed and in need of total renovation. That makes the average price per square foot in this area go WAY down. So if you're going to just look at the figures I could see why they might think we're overpriced. But ours is the only house this lady has looked at. She hasn't seen what else is on the market and what else has sold--she has no idea how rough a lot of those houses are. James heard her estimate of what she thinks our house is worth and had me tell Jason that if that's what she wants to pay for a house she can buy the dump one street over--not this place. Ha! We feel like we're priced aggressively and were willing to come down beyond that to this lady's offer (even with her crazy stipulations), too. But NOW...

She said she needed more time. We were all really getting the impression that she would probably submit a new offer, lower than her initial one--the one that we had come around to agreeing to. The more that we talk and pray about it, we just don't feel comfortable coming down any farther. We're already taking a loss--something we're not used to doing! Ha! James had me call Jason today and tell him that we have already accepted her terms and that's what we're willing to do--don't let her waste her time, her realtor's time, Jason's time, or our time by submitting anything other than what she already agreed to. Not agreed to--we agreed to it--it was HER idea! It sure feels like she's welshing on us though. She didn't get an answer to us by noon, which means the contract is now dead. Isn't it morally and ethically wrong to welsh on a deal that YOU initiated??? It's so frustrating that we're giving the crazy woman everything she asked for, but she somehow thinks it's not a good deal now.

So we've been through the whole spectrum of emotions today. I feel pretty well exhausted and have pretty well given up on actually getting the house sold right now. That sounds much more desperate than I actually feel (!), but I can't think of how else to say it. I keep praying and trying to surrender it to God, trying to make sure I'm totally yielded to whatever He has in store for us. I trust that He'll sell this house in His own good time, but until then we need to look realistically at what the next step is to be. We've got to get at least James to Alabama, even if the rest of us can't go right now. We're all going next week for Minister's Convention, but after that we're going to have to start making arrangements of some kind if we don't have a contract on the house.

There's still a chance the crazy lady will come through, but I'm certainly not holding my breath. The full price offer people are still out there, but they have to sell their house (and it's a two bedroom--much harder to sell than 3 or 4 bedroom homes) before they can buy. And they're not bound to that offer anyway (it expired Tuesday night)--they probably just offered full price because they knew we were receiving another offer and were hoping we'd go for theirs because of it. The only thing that I KNOW is that it's going to take GOD to work any of this mess out! Ha! I'm just sooooo tired of it. I want it all to be over with. I feel like I've been on the verge of tears all day today, like I just might plop down on the floor and sob for a while. It hasn't actually happened, but I've felt close. I kinda wish it would just happen and I could get it over with, then go on. That's the way I function under big stress. One good breakdown can carry me for a good, long while. ;-) It's like it gets me to a whole new level of surrender and I feel so peaceful afterwards. As of yet, I still feel sort of heavy about everything and just... Oh, I don't know--the word DRUDGERY keeps coming to mind, but I can't seem to form a sentence with it to express my feelings! Ha! It's really not nearly as depressing as I make it sound, I just feel worn out with everything and I want it to end. But God has a perfect time for everything, right? I believe that with all of my heart. There are probably some valuable things He's trying to teach me through all of this. I need to find a way to refocus myself in that direction.

As for James, he's been handling everything extremely well. Well... except for when Jason told him that the lady was mad because we were nickeling and diming her! Ha! He wasn't just real happy about that. ;-) Still, he's handled everything well and doesn't seem stressed out (for those friends who worry about that happening around here--ha!), but he does feel HEAVY. I can feel it when he walks in the room. It's not even so much about the house deal falling apart as it is that he's got a Minister's Convention coming up next weekend, we leave one week for now, he's got soooooo much preparation to do for it, but he's spent the last 3 days consumed with all of this house stuff and hasn't been able to work on Convention stuff at all because of it. --And now it's looking like it's all to no avail anyway! Frustrating. Sources of irritation, is that what we're dealing with, Mom? What are we supposed to do when we encounter sources of irritation??? I think it has something to do with yielding our rights. Our right to sell the house when we want to... the right to sell it for the amount we'd like... the right to have this chaos come to an end... the right to spend our time on what we had planned to spend it on... The right to punch somebody in the nose for welshing on a deal that she initiated... HA! I feel so much better after typing that last one. I should express myself more freely. It works like therapy for me. ;-)

THAT'S IT. My sad and depressing ramblings (ha!) for the week that was SUPPOSED to be full of rejoicing over answered prayer and the open door to get where we need to be... Gotta give up the right to that, too, I suppose. ;-) Thanks for all the prayers. God is hearing and He is answering, even if we can't see it right now. He is good. We are blessed. :-)