Stressing out in Hudson

As part of our retirement plan, in the spring of 2012, we sold our home in Gatineau without an agent. We got the price we wanted and didn’t need to give someone else a big chunk of it in commission. The market was not that good but we must have been lucky! At one point we had 2 acceptable offers on our house. We didn’t stress much about it, as long as you don’t become emotionally involved and you remind yourself that it is a transaction, it’s a walk in the park; just be careful about the snakes out there!

Our home in Hudson has been on sale since January 2014, we felt that since we couldn’t enjoy it because of health issues we were dealing with, we could easily part with a place we had never slept in. One of the big plus for us, while it was for sale was that from time to time we had an agent walking through the house. We priced the house where we were not loosing money but we were not making any profit either (considering we were paying the condo fees all along).

At one of the first meeting we had with our agent and park manager Rosemary during our vacation in Hudson, she told us about a couple who visited our house twice, 2 weeks before we came. It showed they were interested but were considering 2 houses. She tried to get hold of them before we came down to see if they had made up their mind but they were not getting back to her.

We didn’t worry about it; we had a lot of work and had no time to waste in “what if”.

By the time Halloween was upon us, we had spent a little over a week in our home and had one week left. We had furnished the house, fixed the air unit, bought a washer/dryer, a dishwasher and a good comfortable mattress for our bedroom. We had been busy!

Rosemary sent us an email saying the couple she had mentioned previously wanted to come back and visit our house again. If we agreed, they would come at 2:00 PM Saturday. We told her to go ahead; we would be out of the house.

Saturday was a nice day and we left before lunch, we went to our favourite beach and enjoyed the free time. Around 4:30 PM, we came back to our home but the potential buyers were still in there (they were 2 hours late), so we went to the club house and played pool. After a while we heard Rosemary coming in the club house with the couple, she was showing them the accommodations. She saw us in the back room so she didn’t bring them there. She freed herself a few minutes to tell they were making an offer!

Once they went to the office and I had won the pool game, we returned home. Around 7:00 PM, Rosemary came to our home with an offer.  Of course it was less than what we were asking for but still a good price if it had not been for the fact that we had just spent so much on the house and furniture.  Had it arrived 2 weeks earlier, we would have accepted it!

Sunday morning we decided to counter-offer telling Rosemary this was a firm offer, we would not take a penny less and to consider it a final offer! Our counter offer was only $ 2,000 more than the offered price; it would cover some of our expenses but by no means would it cover the whole thing. In one hand we didn’t think this couple was responsible for our expenses but on the other hand if they had not delayed their decision, we would not be in this limbo.

Rosemary said the couple were happy to see that we didn’t counter-offer by a huge amount and they thought we were reasonable.

The time was getting short for us; we were leaving that Friday morning.  By late Monday, the couple came back and said they accepted our offer however they wanted us to pay the sales tax! This “offer” meant $ 210 less than their original offer!

Our stress meter was getting in the red zone! I told Rosemary NO! I was thinking this pretty much was the last we’d hear of this couple, but on Wednesday they came back with the idea that they accepted our offer and would rent from us until their financing was in place! NO! If you ever find yourself in this situation, don’t allow any one to move in.  You will either never see your money or they are going to pick on every little thing they can find to get you to lower your price in order to pay for their own house improvement.

By that time I just didn’t trust them at all, but it is not an emotional transaction.  If they buy, we have a day and a half to get things in order for the sale, and I will not need to come back down from Canada to pickup our personal stuff.  However I can’t afford the time to deal with them anymore, so I told the agent to get back to them and tell them our price was firm and I wanted them to give us a $ 500 non-refundable deposit on the home.  As for the home inspection they wanted, no problem, have it done the same day. The way I saw it is if they really wanted the house, they would have a $ 500 stake in it which would make it harder for them to change their mind and would reassure us.

They said Yes but asked that the home inspection be done on the following day and we agreed. So on our last full day in Hudson, we were expecting to see the home inspector. Our house is a pre-fab so there is no issues with the house, I’m confident that the house is sold. We started packing while going through every thing we had, selecting what to bring back, what to throw away, what to bring to charity, etc.  The first thing I did in the morning was to go buy some more boxes to bring back most of our stuff we brought down from Canada and some we had just bought. The house is a mess because we are getting ready for our trip back the next day.

At 09:00 am I went to the office to see Rosemary and thank her for her help. She has been an angel since Christiane’s cancer and we appreciate her. The first thing she told me: “Richard you might not be happy… they cancelled their offer!” Darn! I knew it, I knew I couldn’t trust them. I hurried back to Christiane and we went back to unpacking and getting the house nice and ready for our next vacation.

I am positive the couple knew we were there for a short time and tried to take advantage of us with delaying tactics. This strategy could work on motivated sellers but we didn’t need to sell the house.  It would have been good to sell but we are getting closer to reaping the benefits of owning it. It messed up our last week in Hudson.  The house is still for sale at a new price which includes the furniture.  If it sells we will go back and pack and if it doesn’t, we are going back in January and then next fall we will be there for 6 months.