As I said in my last post, we made an offer on the condo, and all seemed to be going well. The seller was due to sign off on the counter-offer on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend. We were excited. The holiday weekend stretched before us. We were buying a new condo by the lake. Our next holiday weekend would be spent messing about in kayaks and playing with the dog that we’d have to buy. Just before I fired up the BBQ and cracked open a beer, I shot a quick conversational email to my Realtor. She quickly shot one back: The seller hadn’t signed the papers.
Memorial Day weekend was ruined.
Ok, that was a bit melodramatic, but I was trying to hold your attention past the jump. As I was saying, the seller didn’t sign. It was that same feeling you get when you go for one of those movie’n’dinner dates and the guy never calls again. Was it something we said? Did someone better come along? I knew I acted too eager. Probably turned her off.
The Realtor called. Apparently the seller did sign the papers, but faxed them to the wrong number. Oh yeah, I’d heard that one before: “Sorry, I lost your number.”
We heard that the seller was going to sign the papers on Tuesday, which was two massive long days away. We didn’t know whether to believe the agent. Memorial Day stretched in front of us like purgatory.
Memorial Day arrived. We heard word that another unit in the same building had just come up on the MLS. We raced off to see it. It was bigger, cheaper and had a deck, rather than a balcony. Our seller still hadn’t signed the papers.
Turned out that it was easy for us to transfer our affections, and we made an offer on the spot, withdrawing our first offer by voice mail and fax. In hindsight, we couldn’t believe that we’d ever thought that first unit was even our type.
But this new condo? This could be the start of something beautiful, or so we thought at the time.