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I think we make our own destiny. In order for any deal to happen, it takes work. The agent or buyer does work to find a house and negotiate a deal, and then to make sure that all the right calls get made and all the right conversations take place. Sometimes the different parties are too far apart on what they want from the transaction or life changes and things fall apart, but I don't believe that is destiny either.
Sometimes a buyer finds another house right away and loves it more, sometimes they have to look for a while, sometimes they never find one they like as well. That is a measure of their standards. If there is only one house in town that has what they wanted, and the deal falls apart, they should have worked harder to make that deal work.
Sometimes a seller finds a new buyer for more money, sometimes they have to settle for less, sometimes they never do find another buyer. That is a measure of what they are willing to sell for.
So I do believe in luck, in that sometimes when you are looking to buy just happens to be exactly when the right person is looking to sell. And sometimes bad things happen that make a deal fall apart, by sheer dumb luck. But I don't believe in destiny, real estate, or other.
This is life 101. Life is the sum of the choices we make. If Plan A doesn't work out, then always have a Plan B. Sometimes you marry Plan B and are really grateful Plan A didn't work. Sometimes not.
We convoy over there - we're all excited - get out of the car, walk in and go "uh-oh". We hated it. It was cramped, there was no room for storage, bathrooms looked cheap, kitchen was tiny ... the listing agent was TICKED OFF - but we got the hell outta dodge super quick.
This was our same story with a dozen homes listed on MLS with no interior photos... Carrington Mansion from the outside, Munchkinland on the inside. Such a bummer.
Agreed, Lacerta. A lot of this comes back to having the right attitude when you are buying or selling, and not playing cat-and-mouse games with the other party when you're not too far apart on what you're looking for.
Case in point, my neighbor (also currently renting) was looking for a home as well- they saw their "dream house" and put in a low offer, the seller came back and said they only needed $1K more to get out of the house clear without coming out of pocket.
My neighbor played a RE game: she told the seller they wouldn't give $1 more, forget $1000. Their offer wasn't accepted, and a week later they were in attorney review with another buyer. My neighbor checked recent home sales and the new buyer purchased for the full listing price.
That's a story where the seller had real estate destiny.
We had been trying on and off to sell a townhouse in northern Florida for 3 years without success. It wasn't priced higher than comps, it was immaculate, available for immediate closing, no faults - except it simply did not sell.
For almost 2 years we used it as a vacation property and had no immediate plans to re-list.
Out of the blue I get a telephone call at work from a neighbor in northern FL who is a realtor and at one time had the property listed. He said, "What's your fax number, I just sold your townhouse." Sure enough, he had. The money was right, closing was convenient, just fine. I trusted him, he trusted me, so it didnt' matter that we didn't have a formal contract at that moment.
He did not have keys to the property and sold it without the buyer seeing it! They could not even peek through the windows because we kept the blinds pulled when we were not there. Amazing!
We drove down for the closing, met the buyer at the unit and showed it to him for the first time. He was thrilled with it. Inspector was there too, so it was quite a crowd, but buyer, neighbor realtor, and us went to the bar for a drink and chat. (It was in a golf community).
We played golf with the buyer the next morning and closed in the afternoon, then went to dinner with our neighbor realtor where we all laughed about the odd circumstance.
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