An Offer On The Unknown House!

It looks like we have an offer (and possibly) a contract on the house. We got the initial offer this morning, and it came in at just 5% under our listing price, and with a very short closing date (June 30). After a few rounds of back-and-forth, by this evening we seem to have settled on a price that's just about 2% below the listing price, with a closing date of 7/21.

All in all, not too bad for having it listed only a week (and over Memorial Day weekend yet).

The weirdest thing is that the negotiations have to go through TWO agents. I can understand why the agents want to do that, since it give them control, and sellers (and buyers) can do ill-considered and often irrational things. But it makes it very hard to negotiate, because there's very little flow of information. They make an offer, and we counter. Then they counter, and so on. Unfortunately, since all we get is doubly filtered, neither party can determine what the other party's key concerns are, so the negotiation comes down to price (and sometimes the closing date). It feels like two people shooting at each other in the dark blindfolded.

Now that this seems to be in order, all we have to do is find another place to live in. So, it's another 250 mile trip this Thursday round two of house shopping (round one was in April). We've got about nine or 10 that seem reasonable, so by this time next week we could have a new house under way.

Stay tuned!