Making it Through the Showings

It took us a little over a week to get John's place set up to show. As John put it, we had to play tetris in real life to get everything to fit into his storage unit. John and I both have this problem where we never throw anything away. He hadn't ever completely unpacked so we needed to get everything put away. Our real estate agent, Steve, reminded us that people will snoop so we needed to get everything organized. I thought we did a pretty good job. Steve came over after we had the place set up and took pictures. John gave him the keys to the condo and then we heard that he had a showing set up the day that it was set to go on the market.

The showing was set for 1pm. John's place was at the bottom of the hill, about two blocks from Mutual. I had a meeting at 1 and as I was sitting down for my meeting, my phone started vibrating. (Oh, crap...this can't be good. Okay...get through the meeting as fast as possible...) I checked my phone and Steve had left a message. I didn't bother listening to the message. I called him back and he tells me that he can't get in. I asked him if he couldn't get into the building or where he was stuck. There was a key for the building, a key to get onto the floor and a key to get into the condo. He said it was the key to get into the condo. I grabbed my keys and my ID and ran down two flights of stairs, across the parking lot to the garage, up two flights of stairs to my car and drove down the hill to give him my key. I took the east elevator up to the fourth floor but when I got there, Steve wasn't there so I called to find out where he was. He said he'd gone down to third floor to see another unit on sale in the building. Then he asked if I smelled something in the elevator when I came up. I said no, but then the west elevator doors opened for the other elevator (the one I didn't take) and the most horrible stench came wafting out of the elevator shaft. I kept my lunch down and went to unlock the condo for Steve so the potential buyer could see it. I walked in and put my things down on the bathroom vanity. After getting the key off my keyring, I hurried out because the sellers aren't supposed to interact directly with the buyers when there are agents involved. I waited in the elevator lobby on fourth floor for the elevator to show up. Of course, the west elevator opens and out walks a younger guy holding an NPDodge folder. (CRAP - of course he had to take the stinky elevator!) I got on the elevator with an old lady to go downstairs and she pleasantly says "Sure smells bad!" I wanted to tell her "It smells like something died! How can you be pleasant about this?!" but I was just like "Yep." We stopped on third floor on the way down and a guy got on carrying three big cubes of foam. The lady commented to him as well that it smelled bad and he responded by telling both of us that someone was nice enough to plug the trash chutes with the foam pieces he was carrying. (Of course, the one day this happens in the two years John has lived there would be the very first showing!) So what we were smelling was rotting garbage. Awesome. I got back in my car and called John to tell him what had happened. I was certain that the guy wouldn't ever come back. If I had toured a place that smelled that bad, I certainly wouldn't return. I asked John where the keys came from and at first he was insistent that they were the ones his aunt gave back to him after he moved in. I told him that I don't know what she gave back to him but they certainly weren't the right keys. Then, after having a few minutes to think, he remembered that those were the keys to offices at UNO when he was going to school and working there. Yeah, really useful.

Steve promised he'd call after he was done with the showing. I was certain he'd have bad news. But he called back to say that the guy really liked it and he was bringing his mom back to see it the next day. I prayed that the place wouldn't stink when Mom came to see it. We made it through the second showing without any problems and then we waited for a few days before receiving the first offer. It was $12,000 lower than the asking price which was a little depressing. John was pretty upset considering that when he bought the place, he ripped out everything and put in all new carpet, tile, bathfitters, appliances, kitchen floor, paint, etc. Pretty much everything in the place was new. After debating for about a day, he decided to send back a counter-offer. We got through the offer/counter process pretty quickly and settled on a more agreeable price. We were pretty excited about the whole thing because the place had only been on the market for a little over a week when we accepted the final offer. Then we found out that the buyer wanted to close by no later than April 17th. It would be a pretty tight schedule because the buyer gets seven days to have a home inspection and possibly request repairs. We couldn't start packing things until the inspection process was complete.