Well it’s been almost four weeks since I left NY State and nearly 6 weeks that the house has been on the market. We have had many, many showings, but no bites. After 4 weeks we decided to lower the price to what our Real Estate agent now tells us is a more appropriate listing price! Huh? I just can’t believe the Gaul of some folks who call themselves professional. Why didn’t we list at this price to begin with, she knew we are in need of a quick sale and are willing to “break even”!
I have to believe the original price was set to maximize commission on the sale. When I complained about the number of showings and lack of offers, the “folks feel it’s priced too high”, line was brought out – I will say that she immediately offered to lower the commission percentage by a point, so that helped. In the end we ended up lowering the price $10K, which ate all of our original down payment and leaves us with a balance due at closing around $2000. Which is all we have in emergency savings right now (our previous emergency savings being decimated by my job loss).
So all of this brings me to today’s misery. With the reduction in price, another round of copious showings has erupted, but as we saw last month, not offers, not even low balls. When I queried for feedback, I got the standard line of too high in price and now “there looks like there was high water in the basement”. (see this entry for more on that: https://candoreetlabore.wordpress.com/2015/06/14/selling-houses/)
As if on cue, I get a call from our house-sitters that the basement flooded last night due to a tripped circuit breaker. This morning we also found out that the float had disengaged from it’s clamp and it was not tripping the pump to turn on, whether the breaker was on or not! So an inch or so of standing water needed to be drained, which the sump pump took care of, except in the low spot, where the water needed to be pushed into the French drains to get to the pump. Ugggh!
We are now considering just tearing out the finished part of the basement and leaving it as an unfinished basement. Life just doesn’t seem very fair right now. We are going to have to put more money into that house, money that we will never recover, and probably end up lowering the price again to get a buyer. I pushed for renting right from the start to build up more equity, and it looks more and more like I was correct. I’m willing to give this selling the house another month, then it goes to renting, screw what the real estate broker wants to do! After a year or two of that, I’ll put it back on the market, but with a different agent, one that is willing to work for me!
The one major flaw to that plan, is that I will still have to work with an agent who lives in and loves NY State!
candore et labore 