The Offer

Seventeen days into having our house on the market, and it was beginning to wear on me. Keeping the house spotless, toting two small boys and a dog everywhere I went, and checking my phone on a constant basis, hoping for news of another showing or an offer, was getting exhausting.

Of course, the day came when we were hosting a dear friend from out of state. I was taking her to Portland to meet her sister for an afternoon of family time, when the text came. "I would like to show your home ASAP." Being in NE Portland at the time, I freaked out a bit. I had not brought the dog (the one and only time I went anywhere without her in those 17 days), our house was a disaster, and our office was set up as a guest bedroom, complete with a air mattress and suitcases.

Emily was kind enough to take on the job of texting the realitor back to let him know that it would be a couple of hours before the house would be in showing shape. He was kind enough to agree. After dropping her off, I drove home as quickly (and safely) as I could. I also called Joe to let him know the situation, when he decided to leave work early to help me set up the house. When we finally arrived at home, we had 45 minutes to prepare the house and get out.

We did our best, and I can safely say that our house looked pretty good when we left. It was a super hot day, so we drove around rather than hanging out at a park or walking around town as we would have normally done. After Nolan had a quick snack while parked in a quiet neighborhood, we started to drive out to the country, when I got the message that the potential buyers were done looking and that our house "showed very well."

That evening we headed out to a birthday party for our good friends. While finishing up our dinner, my phone rang. It was our realitor with some interesting news. They couple who had viewed our home that afternoon wanted to make an offer. They suggested that we drop our price quite a bit, as well as pay closing costs. We were very excited about the offer, but we knew that it was not something we could agree to. We had a tight window for profit, and the current offer wouldn't allow for any.

We took that evening, and the next morning to decide how to proceed. When I told our realitor that we wanted to counter with a full price offer, but would cover the closing costs, we were all convinced that the negotiations would be over. A half an hour later, we had a deal! Everyone was shocked. I couldn't believe how quickly we had gone from frantically cleaning to celebrating.

As with any real estate transaction, there are hurtles to clear and speed bumps to cross, but just seeing our home go pending in less than three weeks was amazing! We owe it all to our wonderful realitor, who worked so hard to get our house out there for people to see. She is truly talented when it comes to sales and marketing, and we are so so so lucky that we had her in our corner.

Now, fingers crossed for a positive outcome from the inspection!