Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before

Does this look familiar? It's the house we were five days short of buying & moving into back in the Fall of 2008. Why am I digging up old pictures and wounds? Well, because the homeowners contacted us a couple of weeks ago via our shared real estate agent to see if we'd still be interested in buying the house. The immediate answer was, "No." After the deal fell apart in 2008, thanks to a low 2nd appraisal the week before closing that would have required a renegotiation of the sale price, we wrote off the possibility of this house ever being our home. We were disappointed at the time, but after focusing on all the negatives like the small bedrooms & hefty mortgage note, we moved on to new possibilities.

Never in a million years did I think we'd be discussing the possibility of buying that particular house again. Especially after the homeowners called us "cheap" because we were unwilling to overpay for their house and instead walked away from the deal. We asked them to drop their price to the amount that it appraised for so we could move forward, but they said they would never sell that for that price. I guess they thought we'd forget about that little "cheap" comment if they approached us with a new lower price a year & half later.

Well, we never forget. Plus, eighteen months later, the real estate market is even worse off than before, and their house is worth significantly less than the "insulting" amount that they previously refused to consider. I guess this couple just likes to live in denial and therefore torture themselves because we countered their proposed price (which was $175,000 less than the "insulting" compromise we proposed way back when) with a realistic figure for today's market that was about $50,000 less, and they were once again insulted.

Oh well. We thanked them for thinking of us first and sincerely wished them luck in securing a buyer for the price they desire. God knows they're gonna need it! Idiots!