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The Tale of the Sale of our Home

22/8/2007

Preface

After living for eight years in Lismore, Northern NSW, my wife, Angela, and I decided that it was time for us to move on to where we could be closer to her mother and to our three children now living in Sydney, and at the same time, have access to the traditional Mass rather than the Novus Ordo.

At that time, our elder son, Ruben, a Franciscan for about five years, was living in Emu Plains, in Parramatta Diocese, Zenith was in his fourth year in the Australian Navy, and serving in the Persian Gulf, and Miriam was at Australian Catholic University doing second year nursing.

After some years of struggling with the Novus Ordo church in Lismore, we felt that, sacramentally, spiritually or socially speaking, we were going nowhere. We thought that, if we wanted to live a real Catholic life according to the dictates of the Gospel, we should relocate to where we could have the regular spiritual nourishment of the traditional Mass and Sacraments. We know of no other option within reasonable access to Sydney than the Chapel of the Society of St. Pius X in Singleton, about three hours drive to Sydney. To that end, we had first to sell our home; so around October 2005, we put our house on the market.

This is our story of selling our home.

- 1 -

Before putting our home on the market, we called three real estate agents to give us an assessment of our house. All valued it at $259,000, so that was the price we put on our home.

Our home was a basic 3 bedroom, one bathroom, one garage house in a quiet and leafy location right opposite the University in popular East Lismore. The no-fuss garden was established with fruit trees, and as well as lots of storage space both in and under the house, the house had three separate outdoor areas.

Preferring not to go through an agent, in November 2005 we commenced to try to sell our home privately. We used three internet venues: two websites which sponsored agent-free sales, and my own website. We used the local paper as well as the Trading Post, but with little success. During that time we had only one offer, $245000, which we turned down outright. We were so confident that we would get the money we asked. How flawed was our thinking that we would do it so easily!

- 2 -

After about four fruitless months we began to consider what to do next, and in April 2006, we decided, while retaining our right to sell our home privately, to use the services of a real estate agent whom we will call Pino.

Six months later, even though countless people came to see our house, both accompanied by the agent and during numerous Open House viewings, nothing positive had come of it. There were times when the agent arranged to meet the prospective buyer out the front but the agent was late and we showed them through ourselves!

Now I started to think that maybe there must be something wrong with our home. For the first time, I looked at it with real concern.

“The guttering needs some work, because in some spots it is rusty, if not leaking,” I said to myself. So I called the plumber who incidentally was the owner of the house next door. He came and gave me a quote for $1,360. I agreed to the price, and within a week the job was done.

And at the end of November 2006, our house was still unsold. I realized then that the real estate agent Pino was not doing his job properly, suspecting it was because we did not give them the exclusive right to sell. So around Christmas, we changed to another real estate agent, ‘White’. This time, however, we gave the exclusive to the real estate agent. That meant we could no longer sell our home privately.

Now White was well aware that our house had been on the market for a year and that such a state of affairs was not propitious. Not content with having exclusive right to sell, White advised us to have our house on the Multi-List. This meant that the house was listed with almost all the real estate agents in town. We did not know at the time, but that was another mistake.

Just a week after we signed the contract with White, he arranged a showing, where a representative of each of the several real estates agents came to our home to inspect and appraise it. It seemed to us like hordes of them came traipsing through our home as if it were a marketplace. They were in and out of our home in just a few minutes, completely ignoring our presence or giving us cheesy grins or patronizing glances. Each one was to put a value on our home and then the amounts were to be averaged!

A few days later, White phoned us to say that our home was assessed at between $220,000 and $240,000. I was fuming when I heard that. Some of these agents had previously given estimates of $259,000. Then I started to understand how real estate agents try to deceive vendors.

Knowing that our home had been on the market for an extended period of time, they had decided to bring the price down and so get a quick sale, at the loss to the vendors. A flash came to me then and I said to myself: ‘Houses on the multi-list generally belong to the category of “hard to get rid of”.’ Our house was now tainted by being too long on the market, sort of “shop-soiled” and so “marked-down”.

It became clear to me that we had made a few mistakes because of inexperience:

• Turning down the first offer of $245,000, while selling privately; there is a saying in real estate that the first offer is the best offer.

• Giving our home to Pino, without the exclusive right to sell.

• Not taking it off the market, before changing to real estate agent White. When a house has been on the market more than three months, it becomes “stale.” People say, “There must be something wrong”.

• Finally the decision to put our home on multi-list, thus cheapening it further.

While our home was with White we had two offers, $220,000 from the first and $230,000 from a second one. We turned down both offers, not only because we thought our home was worth more than that, but because to buy another home that would not be sufficient.

Then in March, Gail, who had made the second offer of $230,000 wrote us a letter. She asked us if we would reconsider her low offer because that was the maximum she could come up with, and she really had fallen in love with the house.

At our invitation, Gail came to see us. Gail was the wife of a law lecturer, and mother of two children, and soon to deliver her third. After about an hour of talk about how much she liked our house, and how her long-term goal was to make it into a place where single mothers could have a secure home while studying at university; she told us that because she would have a payment on the birth of her third child, she could manage to add $5000 to her offer. Would we accept her new offer of $235,000? We told her that we would consider it and let White know our answer.

By this stage we were tired and almost exhausted, both mentally and physically by the whole thing. I had enough of the games of real estate agents whom I found to be incompetent, if not out-and-out stupid. We felt consoled that at least our home would be used for a good purpose. We believed that we had no option but to accept the offer of $235,000, and we did.

Then started an influx of visits from Gail’s family to see her proposed new home – first her parents-in-law and sister-in-law. They were pleasant enough people and we made them welcome. Them came her parents who were not so friendly or relaxed, but we made them welcome too.

- 3 -

The Trio: Elena, Judy and Bill

During the waiting period while Gail and her husband were sorting out their finance, we received a visit from a woman, Elena, who was interested to buy our house. She came independently of an agent and was one of a group of three who were looking for investment properties. Elena seemed to be impressed and we told her that we had had an offer so she needed to move soon and to beat the offer we had received.

“How much have you been offered?” she enquired.

“I cannot tell you that,” responded Angela.

Then about a week later, while I Gail’s parents-in-law were visiting I received a phone call from Elena’s friend, Judy. “Elena told me that she likes your house very much. Now I am ringing to find out if your house is still available…” she said.

“Actually, I have visitors at the moment. They are the parents of the couple whose offer we have accepted …But if the sale does not go ahead…we would be prepared to deal with you…”

“Nadir,” Judy said, “how much are you selling your house for?”

Being distracted by having visitors I spoke without thinking clearly: “….mmm… we are selling it for $235,000.” I didn’t want to tell her, and I regretted on the spot having told her. I knew that telling Judy the agreed price - if the deal, for one reason or another, did not go through - would undermine my chances of achieving our desired price.

“I see…” said she. “Well, as you said, if the deal does not go through, please let us know as Elena was very impressed with your home and I trust her judgment. We would be interested.”

Gail plays up

Four weeks after we had agreed to Gail’s offer, nothing was happening. With the acquiescence of her husband, Gail started to play delaying tactics with us. We had three inspections done in the second week, the building inspection, the pest inspection, and the bank’s valuer - all OK. Four weeks later, no deposit was forthcoming, although finance had been approved.

The story was that Gail and her husband had enquired if any additions to the property had been approved by council. We knew of no additions so they went to the Lismore Council to ask for a plan of our property. The Council told them that all the records if any existed) had been lost in the 1974 floods. So Gail decided to have our property surveyed, at their expense, of course. We agree to it, but she wanted it done while we were out of town for a week. We told her to wait till we returned, as we wished to be present when the surveyor came.

We returned one day earlier, and on our return from shopping in town, we found the surveyor and his assistant at our place in our driveway about to commence work - without notice or consent. That really put the cat among the pigeons, so to speak.

We were stunned and rather upset at this affront. We asked the surveyor for an explanation as to why we were not given notice of their coming. The reply was that they had tried to contact us by phone but there was no answer, so they contacted White who gave them the go-ahead saying: “Yes, you just do it. I don’t think they will mind.”

We demanded the surveyor leave the property at once and without delay. He remonstrated that we would not be able to get the property surveyed if we did not allow them access at that time. We told him that did not worry us; reluctantly he packed up and left. Immediately we phoned our conveyancer who assured us that we had acted rightly. By this stage we were so fed up with Gail’s strange and unethical behaviour that we ordered our conveyancer to end our commitment with them.

We started anew. We took our home off the market for a period of a month. Then we gave it to another real estate agent, William.

- 4 -

Facelift

While we were still with White we thought that if we wanted to sell the house we had to spend some money and have it painted inside and. We had a painter come to give our home a facelift, at the cost of $2,200. And we moved out for a few days while we had the carpets removed and the floorboards polished in the bedrooms and the lounge room at a cost of $1,570.

The Trio is back

It was time now to call Judy to tell her that our home was back on the market. Next day Judy came to see us. She told us again that she would buy our home at the established price of $235,000. However, because she had just bought another property, she had to consult with her other two partners, Elena and Bill. Bill was a builder. The group would buy up houses on larger bocks, subdivide them, do up the old house, build on the second then resell. Our home did not fit the bill but as it had potential for remodeling they were all keen. If we agree, all three would come around to see what they could work out.

Soon after, the three of them came to our place, and Bill inspected the house thoroughly. After he finished, the three of them had a private meeting in the yard, then all five of us sat down to talk. On leaving they told us that within a couple of days they will contact us by phone. “We’ll let you know, if we’ll go ahead with purchase of your house or not…” Judy said, and then they left. The next day Judy phoned to say that they had decided that they did not want to be overcommitted and that they were trying to get another friend, Julian, to come in on the deal. There was little hope at that stage of any sale to the group.

In the meantime, the house had been placed with our third agent, who had agreed to a proviso that if we were to sell to the group, he had no right to claim a commission.

Back on the market

In mid May 2007, we put our home in the hands of our third agent, Williams, this time the smallest in town. We had dealt with him before when we sold our previous home, and his only employee, John, had sold us that same home while working for another agent. I recall the day we went to Williams’ office. I said “John, we want to sell our home and we want $259,000 for it. I don’t want my house to be on market more than six weeks. Do you have on your books any buyers who are prepared to pay that sort of money?”

“Nadir, this is the price range for which we have most demand. As a matter of fact, I could make three or four call right now…” he said, “If your house is not sold within six weeks, I am not trying.”

A week later, John came to our home and we signed the six weeks contract at the asking price of $259,500. However, we included on the contract that we would hold the right to sell our home privately to the group, if during this six weeks they came up with $235,000. But, of course, we did not tell John what their offer was.

Two days later, John came with a prospective buyer who inspected our home. After the buyer left, John came back to tell us that he had made an offer for $249,000. I was delighted, but I held back. I did not want John to know that I was prepared to accept the offer on the spot. So I asked him: “What do you think of the offer, John? Do you think he is genuinely interested?”

“I would give it a few days,” John said, “then I’ll go back to him. At this stage it’s too early to give him a yea or nay, don’t you think?” John looked at us both for endorsement, and then continued, “Your house has been on the market now for three days. We haven’t even advertised it yet. We intend to present your house as our ‘House of the Week’ in the Echo this coming weekend.”

“Alright then,” I said to him, “you know what you are doing. Keep that guy in your book …just in case…you know…” I was very anxious, lest we should lose another potential buyer. I really felt we could accept the offer this time and without holdup. On the other hand, John was our agent; I liked the way he worked so I had to trust him to do his job. “After all, what is the point of having a dog and barking yourself?” I reasoned.

The following Tuesday, John came to our place, this time with a married couple. The couple was not more than five minutes in the house, when John said to us: “Nadir, Mr. and Mrs. Q here are offering you $255,000 for your home. What do you say?”

I could not believe my ears. To say that I was very surprised would be understatement. I thought to myself: We have been on the market for about eighteen months now and no sale. We have been with Williams not even a week and we have had already two offers, one higher than the other. Now this couple is offering us close enough to the money we are asking. The sun started shining before me as for the first time.

Conclusion

Thus, seventeen days later we exchanged contracts and after five weeks, we sold our home in Lismore on 29th June.

At the present, we are living in Broke, in the Hunter Valley and paying $250 rent for a three bedroom house. We arrived here 28th June, and hopefully about the middle of September, 2007, we hope to be in our new home in Scone, about 100 kilometers from here.

But why Scone?

We are buying in Scone for the simple reason that it is the only house we can afford to buy in a decent locality. We have searched many places in the Hunter Valley: Maitland, Singleton, Greta, Branxton, Weston, Kurri Kurri, Broke, Cessnock, Muswellbrook, and some other small towns. However, the prices of the houses, particularly in Singleton, Broke, Maitland, are too high for our budget. There is nothing here below the $250,000, unless we buy a house which needs a lot of work to be done, or the house is located in a socially depressed area. Most three bedroom houses here are above $300,000. This is due to coal mining around the area, where many workers are earning $100,000 a year.

In my opinion there are two major reasons for the high prices in this area: hyperinflation of the Australia dollar and inflated price in the real estate. These two are connected, naturally, for the former causes the latter. However, I won’t delve into this matter. So I close this writing with these last words: “Live for today; learn for tomorrow”.

Maranathà

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To read the updated, please, click here: “The Tale of the Sale of our Home.”

Contact: nadir@sheddinglight.info

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