I have a few other posts in draft status but this one is worthy of being pushed out the door promptly.
For the last four months, nearly to the day, Jenna and I have been thinking about houses. We look at For Sale signs when we are driving, we watch any property hunting or home renovation show we can on TV and we constantly check MLS.ca for homes and new listings. In the last sixteen weeks we have considered building a house, moving to Beaumont and living anywhere from Terwillegar to Tamarack.
In the last four weeks we have listed our condo, sold it and have an offer accepted on a house both of us love. The 24 hours leading up to the offer acceptance was amazing and is nothing short of a real estate miracle.
Wednesday April 7 we met with our Realtor in Sherwood Park to look at a few houses. The first house we saw caught our attention and became our favorite of any we had seen in the month prior (between Open Houses and tours with our Realtor). There were things that needed work but it was a strong candidate. The second house we went to immediately caught my eye and before walking into the house I was in love. You could argue the proximity to Little Caesars Pizza and being on the same road Gord lived on were factors, but they just sweetened the deal of a house that was amazing.
I raved about the house for the next few days and built it up so much in my mind. Both houses that appealed to us would require a second showing, but we used Saturday April 10 as an opportunity to see additional properties and see if those houses still stood up in our mind. They did, and on Monday April 12 we returned to Sherwood Park to see the two houses we liked. Our Realtor broke the news outside of our first stop that the house I loved most was not available, because an offer had been made on April 10th and that we should move on to find that right place for us.
It may have been the crushing news outside of the house, or that the house didn’t appeal to us on a second viewing, but the place didn’t speak to us the same way and we continued looking at properties on Monday night. At 9PM on Monday we got home and felt deflated about everything. The houses we liked were unavailable or weren’t as good and after 20+ viewings we were back at square one.
Tuesday morning I received a text from our Realtor saying the offer on the house had fallen through and we had a second chance to view the house and see if it was worth making an offer. This house had been on the market just over a week and had a lot of foot traffic so we knew time was important and arranged for a viewing four hours later at 2PM. I left work early, picked up Jenna and critically evaluated the house I loved a week prior. It still looked good and as we went room to room we started building our future, imagining coffee on the deck, working on the kitchen island and living on a quiet road.
We were still in the house at 2:30PM when another Realtor showed up with clients, we finished up our viewing and decided to make an offer. Over a cup of coffee we prepared the papers and our Realtor drove the offer to the sellers agent. When he arrived their agent was on the phone with the Realtor we had seen at 2:30PM and was interested in putting in an offer. When she found out an offer was in place she backed out for not wanting to get into a bidding war, something we were hoping to avoid too.
A few restless hours went by and at 8:34PM we received a call from our Realtor, talked numbers on our counter offer and ten minutes later the house was ours. 24 hours prior we were going through the break up process of a house we loved to owning it.
Our Realtor said the right house comes along when you are ready, and had told us that offers do fall through and there could be a chance for us to get this house. We were doubtful about any of that working out, but it did. It was the perfect ending for a house we loved and a story that him, and us, will share for years to come.
