the House Files

We had our first official showing last night.  It was a large family, with a daugher who had just immigrated to Canada and she and her husband spoke no english.  However, the parents really wanted them to live very close to them (for obvious reasons!) and the parents live on our street and the other sister lives just a couple of streets over.  So, they really wanted the house.

However, they were the first people to see the house.  The very first people.  We are selling privately on ComFree, and we want to have two open houses this weekend to bring in the crowds.  They wanted us to sell to them last night and take the house off the market.

Fair enough.  So we gave them a price.  It was a price above our asking price.  Right now in Winnipeg, the housing market is crazy.  We are in a desirable area where houses are selling in one to two weeks for well above asking price.  They came back and said they were only willing to offer us our asking price, that was it.  We want above asking if they are taking away our open house!  It's not like no one will come or we've crazy overpriced our house.  The only other home in the area for the same price is a 20+ year old bungalow.  We have an eight year old cab-over.  The only other new homes in our area that are up right now are a little larger than our home, and priced $20 000 to $40 000 more than our home is priced.  So, even at the $14 000 over our asking price that we gave to them, they were still getting a deal (especially cause our house has a finished basement, and I think both of those others DON'T!)  The older one has a finished basement too.

We were kinda hoping they'd take it, or offer us $5 000 less than what we gave them, which we would have taken.  then we wouldn't have to do these open houses.  :-p  Oh well!  I'm hoping we get bids.  I keep hearing from everyone that I know that has just bought a home in the last few months how they were outbid for several homes... I'm hoping we get multiple offers!  Keep your fingers crossed!!!!