and more ranting

Last week a family came to view the house at late notice on Saturday (luckily the house was still more or less spic and span.. since I'd been running around the place saying to everyone "Don't do that" "Put that back" and "Did you flush?"). I sent Rich and kids out of the house and showed round a couple and their 3 children. They were moving for the same reasons we want to ... catchment. They want their daughter to get into the school this house is in catchment in... I was VERY nice to their kids... I could sense they liked the place... an offer was hovering in the air... I could smell it (either that or someone hadn’t flushed).

On Monday morning, one of the minions from estate agents figured out how to string 7 numbers together and rang me (or he had me on speed dial) with the news that the couple DID really like the house and were going to put an offer in (Aha, I'm not forking out £3000 a year on a psychology course for nothing) but just to be sure they looked up the history of the house and saw that we'd only paid 240K for it 2 1/2 years ago (ah feck). This put them off and they'd bid for another house. I managed to restrain myself from saying that unless they managed to meet Doc. Brown, and do a Marty McFly back to 2009 so they could offer 241K for this house, I didn't really see what their point was.

Anyway I made the point to him that since we were renting at that time and the property bubble was just starting to burst we'd had people chasing after us with contracts, knocking £40k off house prices and throwing their house keys at us. The people we bought from were retiring, downsizing and had already found a place they wanted… they could see their dreams of a new life slipping away with each day bringing more gloom and uncertainty. So being the kind of people we are, we took advantage of them and got this house for a steal. I told him to tell the couple to go take a look at any other house that sold at that time and they'd see this was how the market was at the time, and not a reflection of this property. I also wanted to add that if that was the way they were picking a house I would have appreciated them doing their online research BEFORE I’d spent 2 hours cleaning the house from top to bottom to save us all the bother. But I didn’t.

We heard no more from our friends for the rest of the week. Then this morning a phone call from EA to say the couple have put forward a bid of £290... very politely said I'd rather not sell at all then sell at that price. EA at this point is trying to push us into lowering my price, with the fact that our contract with them runs out in 4 weeks no doubt on his tiny mind. Luckily we're in no hurry though, Noah is very happy at school and with the help of friends we're managing the school run. Plus we really like this house, and as yet have not really found one we both agree on.

However this couple are going to view the house next door (which is up for sale for £315 with a different agent... This could go one of two ways. It could be that this viewing puts our house and our price in a better light for them OR they are going to become our new neighbours ;)