The Saga of the Sale P2

This is part 2 of 2 for the Saga of the Sale, and I'm sitting here in my rocker, staring at the laptop screen, recounting the days, and feeling the need to pinch myself to ensure I'm not dreaming. The stats on the Saga include 2.5 days on the market, 17 showings, 3 early unconditional offers, signing the final deal at 8% over asking, scrambling to find a new place to go, and singing the lease for a change the scenery for 12 months at the minimum starting June 2021.

WHEW!

When we decided to list the house, Tomas (our realtor, if you didn't recall) advised setting an offer deadline that was 5 days after the house was listed. Having never participated in the sale of a home, we were complete "Newbs" and readily agreed to follow his advice. I will tell you that the showing process was not my favourite experience because (a) you have to stage the home the way the pro's wish ... think severely Spartan, (b) you have to maintain a constant state of cleanliness ... not a huge problem for us but annoying for sure, (c) you have to find things to do during the time that complete strangers roam your hallways, and (d) thanks to Covid-19, we had to cleanse the house afterward, just to be prudent. We had 17 showings from 12:00 noon on Apr 7 to 3:30 pm on Apr 9.

As it turns out, the deadline for offers was a line in the sand, and Tomas informed us that one offer had come in early with a 24 hour detonation, was unconditional, and was over asking. We had to agree to entertain the early offer, which we did, meaning that Tomas had to contact all of the realtors who had shown the house and let them know about the changed deadline. By the time the dust settled, we were at Tomas' office looking to make a decision on 3 solid offers, all unconditional and all over asking. In the end, the one that started the whole shebang was the best for a lot of reasons, and the dirty deed was done! 

We were officially homeless as of the end of June!
Wait! Whaaaa?

The cure the homelessness condition meant a search for a new place to lay our heads. I've told you before that there was much discussion of what that would look like, and there were a number of choices on the table, but that the top of the list was the greater Guelph area. I have a number of friends that I have made through education and coaching that live in Guelph and I've always really liked the feel of the city when visiting our son Keaton, who's lived there for 5 years now. I guess that I can be convincing because Joyce agreed that she'd give it the Ol' College Try for a year, so we pointed the truck southwest and spent a day looking at the variety of condo-rental offerings Guelph contained. If you haven't been there, the south end of Guelph has changed immensely over the past 10 years, in what I would guess is a response to the crazy markets of the GTA, driving people westward (in this case) to find affordability that was also easily accessible. There are condo complexes everywhere in the south end!

The Gran-daddy of all real estate web sites is Realtor.ca, if you didn't know that already, but it is not well utilized for rental searches, so we were encouraged by Tomas to give Kijiji a try. With some patience, persistence, and a little petulance, we discovered a shining beacon that went by the name of Sarah. It turned out that she was a teacher CHECK, was offering an oversized condo CHECK, was in the very southern tip of Guelph facing agricultural land CHECK, and was agreeable to a beginning of June possession CHECK! We should have purchased a Lotto ticket with a luck being this good!

Which leads me back to my opening paragraph ... sitting in the rocker, laptop in place, staring at the screen, recounting the events of a very busy 2 weeks. Yep, you read that correctly, from start to finish we have set in motion a significant change in our lives. The only difficult part now is the weeks still left before the move actually happens and we are living in increasingly sparse surroundings as we sift and sort through 30 years of collected memorabilia, deciding which gets donated, which gets tossed and which is making the move.

As the poet Bob Dylan crooned, "... the times they are a changin'!"