punk'd

we knew yesterday that the seller's agent had an open house listed on the house. because we had an accepted offer from them, we asked that they not host the open house. their agent told our agent that he was not going to have it. i did not feel very comfortable about this (i just don't trust people as far as i can throw them), so i told my agent that if we didn't have the signed documents by the time their open house was scheduled, the deal was off. she assured me that everything was on the up and up and to not worry about it. she had an email from the seller's agent that the documents were going to be signed and delivered.

all morning i felt uncomfortable. while brandon was taking his morning nap, james and i decided to rest. i haven't been sleeping well (worse than normal) due to the passing of james' grandmother, worrying about our house sale, etc....so i was about to pass out. my intuition kept me awake though. i told james that i wanted to go down to see if that open house was going on. james didn't want to do that because he didn't want to waste the time, money, or gas to find out that the guy was telling us the truth. but if you know me at all, you know i don't back down. he finally agrees.

we head down to the neighborhood and right before we turned on the street, we made a bet that if i was right about the open house, i could pick out the restaurant for dinner. if he was right, he could. as we rounded the corner, you could see many red, white, and blue balloons in front of the house we had an accepted offer on. my heart started to race. i could feel my body start to get really hot from my toes up to my nose. i pulled the car over, took my cell phone and my agent's business card and got out of the car. james was really hesitant to let me go inside, but he did.

i walked in and peek in the downstairs study and the dining room. as i came out and headed towards the kitchen, the seller's and the agent were standing there. the agent introduced himself. and i reached out my hand and introduced myself. the looks of "BUSTED" on their face was priceless. i then handed him my agent's business card and said, "here's my agent's card. i'm sure you're wondering what i'm doing at this open house that was not supposed to be taking place." i can see the panic in the wife's eyes. the agent says to me, "we had the open house listed on the internet, and we decided to go ahead and have the open house since you and your husband had not executed the contract." i respond with, "WE haven't done our part??? WE are the ones that wanted this signed YESTERDAY. you had no intentions to get that document signed before this open house because you wanted to see if you could get any other offers since you weren't satisfied with the price that we offered (and you accepted) for it. if anyone else wanted this house AND if it were priced appropriately, it would have been sold already." now the wife is really wanting to get out of the house. i decide to call my agent.

me: "guess where i am at?"
agent: "where?"
me: "i'm in the {street name} house."
agent: "what do you mean you are in that house? how did you get in there?"
me: "i'm in their open house!"
agent: "OMG!!!"
me: "i told you not to trust this agent or these people. we had a bad feeling about this situation, so we made the trek down here."

i ended up handing off the phone to the agent so that he and my agent could have a little conversation. he starts stuttering and saying, "we are getting the documents signed right now! the seller's are right here and they will sign right now." he hands me back my phone and i tell our agent that i am on my way out and i'll call her in a bit. at some point, the seller's have gone outside. they were probably too embarrassed about what they had done.

as i walked towards the front door, i told the agent "YES, we did not have a signed and executed document, but it was not us that was holding up the process. it was you and your seller's. they had no reason to believe that we weren't going to get it done because we were the ones wanting it executed the day before." i reminded him that we had even given them an extension until today at 1 p.m. and skipped going to church so that we could get it signed. he said, "this is just business." i said, "i understand that this is business. it's bad business, but yes...it is business. and since you brought it up, then you will understand why i'm rescinding our offer for this house." and i walked out the front door. he chases after me and starts to cut the balloons off the signs and pull the open house signs out the yard, the damage was done. they thought they were punking us...but in the end, it was them.

i had promised the kids before making the decision to go down to this open house that we would go to the ymca. since we were not going to make it back in time, we went over to one of the many playgrounds in the neighborhood. it was really overcast, but thankfully the rain didn't start until after we left.


the kids had such a great time playing here. the slides were HUGE and even brandon went down one of the big ones with jared. big smiles the whole way down! he is our little daredevil!

afterwards, we went to the model home village and i talked to one of the sales counselors about one of their inventory homes. i showed him our prequalification paper, new home comps, and the house we were interested in and asked him to give me his first number. he came down so much, that we now have to seriously consider finishing building out this house. it doesn't exactly give us what the other house was going to, but it would be brand new. and we wouldn't have to give those people a penny of our hard earned money. now this isn't to say that we won't put an offer back on that house if this new build doesn't work out, but the old offer is gone. they are going to have to renegotiate with us, and it's not going to go for the price that we offered this weekend. especially now that we have something so close in price with the new build. these people made a really bad decision.

as for my agent, i'm really upset with her for not getting this paperwork finished by saturday afternoon at the time her husband (and our other agent) demanded be signed by if the terms and conditions were accepted. but the thing that really upset me the most was that she didn't drop what she was doing to come down to the neighborhood to either salvage the deal or to go look at the new home. if i would have been her, i would have moved back or cancelled all appointments. we just feel like we're given no priority, and it's unacceptable because she is making a whole lot of money for hardly any amount of work. grrrrrr.