It's been an emotional roller coaster. First there was the long delay before legally evicting our "renter" after we left. Somehow we neglected to send official paperwork five months earlier when we decided to move and sell that they were required to be gone along with their stuff. (Who knew?)
Consider that your first warning. Check your state's laws on the topic, and note the only qualification for needing the delay to kick them out post notification is they are a human who's been in residence. Doesn't even matter if they've paid. Things changed after covid.
So, we were already well behind how we'd planned for best market timing, early spring when the desert starts to bloom and temperatures are wonderful. We were also way behind in being able to repair and paint to give the best appearance to people walking in to look around. Just one example: the living room floor was painted concrete with a pair of expensive and beautiful area rugs on it with furniture either on or around the outside of those rugs. Those were packed very shortly before we moved out, but we had no real access to the floor to repaint it so it looked nice between then and when we left, naively thinking our renter was also about to leave on our schedule. With the fancy rugs removed, flaws in the paint for unknown reasons, like those four holes in a square pattern where no furniture had been during our 12 years there to put pressure and friction on the surface to pull off the paint, suddenly showed up. We never really had access to that bare, flawed surface to paint it before leaving. Furniture around the house hid developing flaws, and without furniture there was no way for us to remain: no chairs, no beds, etc. Even when we left the floor was cluttered with our renter's stuff, while our minds were cluttered with empty promises to us to remove it.
Six weeks later it finally went on the market. The wheels of justice grind slow. In our case, this also meant that snowbirds had mostly returned to their northern homes. Those down for the spring bloom and likely some pickle ball or golf to help persuade them it should become an annual event had already canvassed the available market, and decided to buy or not. Either way, they were also back north.
There are still some buyers out there. The house gets showings every so often. Our hopes get raised, then... nobody is the right person. You know, the one who can actually picture living in a home that has no furniture, can't see the traffic flow, need somebody else's perfect plan to claim as their own. Just like on the TV shows where some other "expert" tells them how they "have to" decorate.
Our realtor tries to keep us encouraged, that someday the right buyer will come along. But we found our next perfect place, totally empty of furniture so it will have our own stamp on it, meet our needs, keep us comfortable. It also comes with a deadline to buy it. And every day that there's a showing in Arizona and no progress is another day or five closer to our deadline. That's our roller coaster.
She's done things for the house to help it look better, help people think it's an OK place to move into. When one potential buyer started measuring and pricing the cost of tearing out a couple walls, including an exterior one with a 4" drop to the continuation of the floor, she didn't say a word about how crazy an idea that was, how it was an invitation to falls, how much new support would have to go into the project just to make it look like some TV project. It didn't take more than a week for that person to figure how difficult and expensive - OK, let's go with "crazy" here - an idea that was. She backed out, citing too much stress.
I'm going with "too little budget to remake over half a house without bringing it down on her head."
We got feedback from people who didn't like the house and thought it was over priced. We dropped the price. We dropped it again, incidentally after another trip to our hopeful new place where we fell even more in love with it. Now feedback came back that people still didn't like the house but it was priced OK. Our roller coaster swung to "should we drop it more?" Even, "would we be crazy to ask if that initial severely lowball bid is still an offer?"
Our realtor suggested we hold of on any more dropping of price for a while. See what happens. Then she added something surprising, saying there were other problems than price in that lowball offer. I'll quote her here:
"I don’t believe the offer for $205K was “real”. It’s sort of a long story, but I will try to make it short. These “investors” hand out “proof of funds” letters to literally just anyone. These “Pseudo Buyers” run around with realtors and put in offers on homes. The reason the contract said “and or nominee” on it was because the “Pseudo Buyer” tries to present it to this investment firm or tries to find someone who will buy it and then they “assign" the contract to the “real buyer”. Then the investment company will throw the “Pseudo Buyer” a bone and give them a few thousand dollars if they end up actually buying the home. If the “Pseudo Buyer” doesn't find a “nominee" they can assign the sale to, they simply cancel on the very last day of the inspection period. They drag out the inspection period as long as possible (to the very last day) and make you sweat bullets and then on the last day of the inspection period (day 10) they demand thousands of dollars for repairs. It’s awful. At that point sooo much time is wasted the Seller feels like a sitting duck and succumbs to their unreasonable demands. Unfortunately, I learned about these tactics the hard way. It was the worst I ever felt in 25 years of real estate and unfortunately my clients were both blind and trying to deal with this nonsense. Anytime you see “and or nominee” on a real estate contract it’s a huge red flag. Plus their letter said they have 3 million to spend, which equals mega hard core scammers. We don’t have time to waste on this type of thing….
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