judecorp | Dang, I missed Friday the 13th.

There hasn't been much going on to post about, unless you want to hear all of my ire at people who want to sell their houses for ridiculous prices and aren't willing to concede AT ALL that the current market is not at all the same market as, say, two years ago's market. They're hardly distant cousins twice removed. I mean, they both involve houses, and that's about it.

So I thought we were on to House #3 but for a brief time yesterday it looked like we were REALLY on to House #4. After we let go of House #2 for it's crazy overpricing with no hope of coming down ever (beggers can't say "final offer" ever, not in my book, but hey that's cool, keep your house), we got word from our realtor that someone was going to offer on House #3, so we bumped our offer up a couple thousand clams when we heard the people really really wanted to move out.

This is the part I love, I admit: when the realtor calls with the "situation" and I get to figure out what's between the lines and what the REAL situation is. I may not be able to solve ghost mysteries like Scooby Doo, but I'm a goddamned interpersonal Encyclopedia Brown. It's kind of my job, and why I love social work. But anyway.

So our realtor (hereby known as Crash) calls and says that the seller's realtor told her that the did in fact receive a second offer but if we wanted to offer the full price ($7K more than our high offer), it would be ours. We said no and hung up, and at this point I told Jen, "Their other offer is lower than ours, otherwise they wouldn't be calling us. They are lying." Sure enough, several hours later we received /another/ call, and Crash said they had dropped their price $1K. Ummm, no.

(See, the part THEY don't know is that we'd decided when we got the first call that we weren't moving on our offer at all, not a penny, because if we are going to buy a ranch house in Easthampton we are paying that much only because it is cheap. If we're going to go up $7K we might as well go up $10K and buy that first overpriced ranch which is in a better location (Florence) and has a carport. And Florence Ranch is still on the market with no bites and has already been Price Changed, so umm, no worries there.)

I told Jen after the second call, "They are going to realize that they are not going to get their asking price for their house, and that our $7K lower generous offer is the best ever. And they are going to call us back and 'generously' offer us their house." Jen was dubious and said that sellers agents don't call people back. But they do, of course, if they are trying to unload overpriced houses on a timeframe.

Crash called last night while we were at Shani's for Game Night and lo and behold, the sellers want an extra 24 hours to think about our offer - likely because they have some showings or an open house today.

Think hard, dudes. No one in THIS market makes an offer right at showing, especially not one that is not a really lowball offer.

I may be cheap, and I may be cocky, but one thing this househunt has taught me is that I have some weird psychic ability to know the situation.