Actually, it's another two of those days. My real estate agent called back yesterday and told me that the people who put the offer on the house were willing to wait the three months. I was happy for, oh, about 30 seconds before she told me the catch: they wanted me to bring $4000 in cash to closing and they wanted me to give them both of my shower curtains. Are you kidding me? They're getting at least a $40,000 discount on my house. Two years from now, if the economy is better, they should be able to flip the house for that and then some. They both have full time jobs. They have good enough credit that they prequalified for a loan. Their house payment is going to be about half of what mine is currently, which means apiece they'll only have to pay a quarter of what I'm paying, but they want ME to pay THEM? Seriously? And give them my freakin' shower curtains to boot? Not only that, but my real estate agent--the same one who told me three months ago that it was perfectly okay to take my appliances with me--now tells me that I'll have to leave them so the people can qualify for an FHA loan, and, to top that off, I should "leave them as much as I can."WTF????? I need to leave them as much as I can? You want to know what I said to that? I said, "Sure, why don't I leave them my living room furniture, my bed, and my pictures, too, so they can move into a model home while I get to sleep on the floor and starve to death because I don't have any appliances or furniture." Basically, I'm being penalized because I actually put thought into decorating this place. If I had it decorated like the set of My Big Fat Redneck Wedding, they wouldn't be demanding that I leave personal items, and my real estate agent, who can't see past her measly commission, wouldn't be arguing on their behalf instead of mine.
Whether this place short sells or goes into foreclosure, my credit is going to be shot. It will be a long time before I can qualify for enough credit to buy a pack of paper at Office Depot, let alone all the things she thinks these people are entitled to, which apparently includes everything in my house. I have explained this to her time and time again, and this time, instead of agreeing with me, all she had to say was something along the lines of, "Well, this is the only offer you're going to get so you really need to try to give them what they want and then some." She said it rather curtly, too, I might add. Funny, last month, before she realized that the listing was about to expire, she was singing an entirely different tune. She was going on and on about how cute my house was was and how it was only a matter of time. Now, just like my first agent, she sees money slipping away and decides it's time to start acting like a second-class bitch. (If you could see the bleached out, 80's mall rat hair, the tanorexic skin tone, and the mom jeans she had on today, you'd know why I'm not calling her a first-class one.)
As for the $4000 that goes above and beyond what the closing costs would be, if I had that sitting around, I wouldn't be behind on payments, and I wouldn't need to do a short sale. Obviously, the idiots don't quite comprehend the nature of the short sale, or they do and they're just a couple of cheapskates trying to take advantage of a bad situation. They both have full time jobs. I think they're more than capable of getting in their cars on payday, driving down the street to Walmart, and buying two shower curtains. After that, they're just as capable of walking to the Rent-a-Center or the Lowe's next door and purchasing appliances because they're sure as hell not getting mine.
I know it sounds like I'm being difficult or petty, but given the circumstances and the fact that I had this house listed at $119,900 ten months ago, which is $50,000 more than what they're offering, I don't think it's too much to ask that two fully employed people with decent credit not expect the unemployed person with crappy credit to decorate their new house. I have to be able to live after this sale, too. Quite frankly, if the buyers can't afford to furnish a three bedroom house, then they don't need to be buying a three bedroom house. They just need to stay in their one bedroom apartment before they end up in the same situation as me.
Oh, and I did I mention that there might be truth to my mother's conspiracy theory that the buyers may be my agent's daughter and son-in-law and that's why she's suddenly arguing on their behalf? Well, there are a lot of coincidences to consider. I saw an old picture of her daughter when I went by the real estate office today. Admittedly, I didn't pay much attention to the woman who came to see the house the other day, but I do remember her hair color, and it was the same shade of light red as the daughter's. Her daughter is in school. The buyer is in school. When my agent took all those pictures, she went on and on about how much my decorating tastes were like her daughter's, how she was going to send the shots to her daughter to give her some ideas, and how much her daughter was just going to love them. Now here we are, down to the wire, and someone with the same red hair color magically appears and likes my decorating tastes so much that my agent, not theirs, is pushing for me to "leave them as much as I can." Color me paranoid, but that sounds awful fishy to me.
Now, on top of that, my agent told another agent that she could show my house tomorrow. I guess the house isn't technically under contract until we hear from Chase so meanwhile I still have to clean, pick up my dirty clothes, etc. every day. If that wasn't enough of hassle, I also have to get the four members of my family who are visiting me for my birthday this weekend up and dressed in the morning and then go sit somewhere in a hot car with them and four dogs for an hour so that some agent can stand me up again. Yeah, I'm really looking forward to this weekend.
Now I'm off to rethread the blinds like I should have done the other day. I'll probably just have to do them again in the morning, but who cares, so long as one more person can come in and decide that they want more than just my house. Who knows. Maybe this time they'll demand that I give them my dogs, too.
