Well, let me just start at the beginning. I buy foreclosed houses. I don't always buy houses that I would want to live in, but houses that someone would want to live in. This particular house falls in the latter category. In my opinion, the floor plan is suboptimal, it needs a lot of work and more vision than I currently have, plus 2 yippy dogs live next door. We had been unenthusiastically going back and forth in negotiations over this house when the seller finally decided to accept our offer. I did not celebrate. But I did complete the rest of the post-acceptance process: ordered a work write-up and an appraisal and sent in the approval form to the County. By this point in the process, we have spent many staff hours and sunk costs into the property. This is also the house that befouled my Calvin Klein suit with spiderwebs. All so that the County can send me a curt email: "123 Crappy House Lane is in a flood plain." Huh?! BOOOO!!! We check for flood plains before we go to all of this trouble, but recent apocalypse floods in the metro area have altered all of the flood plain maps, so sometimes unpleasant surprises do still arise.
I instructed our agent to please pull the offer. We were well within our due diligence period and didn't want to sink any more time or money into this property. Our agent, who has put in far more work on this offer than the listing agent has, completely understood and told the listing agent, who is also the listing agent for another property we have an offer in on, to please pull the offer.
And THEN y'all, AND THEN the listing agent wrote our agent a superstank email and copied me on it (unprofessional!). Essentially, she expressed disbelief that the house could be in a flood plain (like we just made it up; like we'd have to make up an excuse to withdraw during due diligence, you silly woman) and then said that we'd have to have all government inspections completed on the 2nd property she is representing before she'll take the offer to the seller on that one. But here's the thing: that's a crappy house too. I'd have bought it if the seller had accepted the offer, but I'm not going to beg her to take the offer to the seller. That particular house is half-brick, half-cinder block, needs all new everything and is not in what one would call a desirable neighborhood. So boo to you, lady. Now you can sit on both of those clunkers. Let me know how those commissions are flowing.
I'm mostly bitter because her attitude was totally out of all proportion to the slight. Real estate is unreliable and fickle in these times, especially in the foreclosure market. To prove how much up and down we go through in a day, here is my house tally from this workday:
Offers accepted by the seller: 4Real estate thing is a capricious undertaking in a small world, people. No need to get nasty; long memories cement bad reputations.
Offers accepted and then pulled by the seller: 1
(This was on a house I salivated over; and this is the second time the seller has pulled my winning bid on this house. The second time! But did I stink up the room with my reply? No, I sweetly gave thanks for the opportunity to be turned down again and asked to be held as a back up. Because I have home training.)
Offers accepted and then pulled by the buyer: 1
Net contracts for the day: 2
Post-script: the second house, the one the listing agent created all new hoops for us to jump through, has just gone through a price reduction -- to the price we originally offered. Are we going to reinstate our offer? No. See what ugly gets you? A big steaming bowl of nothing.
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