Going once, going twice... SOLD!

Things were bleak earlier on in the week. We got our first offer on Monday with a figure which was almost insulting, but at least it was something down on paper. The rest of the week was a gruelling back and forth between us and the potential buyers as we rejected each minute increase on their offer price, which even by the end was still close to 20,000 below what the unit was listed for.

With no firm contract, Saturday morning was once again filled with frantic cleaning for our third open house. We fully expected to have no one through on the day due to a major internet mix up but somehow four groups managed to find their way over to inspect the unit. A reasonable amount of interest but by then we were past getting excited with visits without offers.

John and Sheena were down for the weekend for a few errands today so we planned on heading out to dinner at the Blackforest Cafe, Brisbane's home of authentic German fare. We were looking forward to a nice quiet dinner out to take our minds off selling the unit, so imagine our surprise when the real estate agent called to say that another buyer was on the way into the office to put an offer in.

Dinner conversation obviously skirted around what the offer would be as we were expecting to see the agent after our meal, but we all tried to steer the discussion towards less stress-inducing topics. Most of the evening was just spent enjoying the ridiculously large portions we got served in between belting our folk songs with the resident musician.



Alison was sober enough to capture a touching moment on her camera phone.

Upon returning home and suffering a short wait, we finally received the agent who was obviously having a late night of work (Alison's plan to enter Real Estate one day have thoroughly vanished). The offer from the new buyers was a good one... but still not quite at a level where we would have been comfortable. Biting the bullet, we stood our ground and proposed a modest counter offer for the agent to bring back immediately... except the buyers weren't answering their phone at that time of night. *argh*

This morning we woke up and shambled around all day, fully resigned to the fact that in all likelihood we wouldn't be getting any closure till sometime on Monday. Then out of the blue we got a call to say that... after much deliberation... the buyers accepted our counter offer!

We now have a signed contract for the sale of our first property. Still not out of the woods yet obviously as it's still going to be 14 days till finance, building and pest inspections are done and the offer goes unconditional. For that reason we still have an ad in the paper and will be having (hopefully) our last open house this Saturday.

All in all though we're very happy with the result. It's a huge weight lifted off our shoulders which will put us in a great position to jump for joy in a fortnight when things are set in stone.

Still going...

Nothing came out of the open house last week but we had another one yesterday and nine groups of people came through to see the place. More inspections coming out of it lined up for the week and hopefully we're getting closer to a buyer putting something down on paper.

In the mean time we're trying to occupy ourselves with fun activities. We were treated to a lovely dinner at Kath and Andrew's while marvelling at the obscene amount of money that was spent on the Chinese Olympic opening ceremony, which was admittedly impressive. Saturday night had us chalking another mark on the social score board as we had a scrumptious evening BBQ at the Ko's place around the corner.

Emotionally recharged. Just got to pace ourselves as this selling game is likely to be an endurance race across the rocky Australian real estate landscape.

Promising start, still a ways to go

Not too much concrete news to report. About six groups of people came through today at the open house and we have three potentials that are expressing their interest. Still early days yet and nothing's certain but overall it's looking upbeat. Will post more as things progress. Very exciting!