Done and done!
It's been a while since we blogged, and lots to update you on. Specifically what happened with the seller after the inspection... Well of course - he was anything but reasonable. Essentially our agent Mike went to him with our inspection report of what could potentially add up to $25,000 in repairs - and his response was "I won't come down one more penny." That said, we know that the renovation plans we have will address most, if not all of the issues the inspector raised. But the bottom line is, ultimately we're buying THIS house, in it's present state, and regardless of our future plans for it we shouldn't have to absorb all the cost of any repairs that it needs going in.
Home Inspection
It's been a busy couple of days. We got all of the offer paperwork signed and finalized, made a quick trip in to the bank to pick up our pre-approval letter to satisfy our financing condition, then topped it off with a road trip to Ottawa to visit a friend and celebrate the Canada Day long weekend. It was our first time spending the holiday in the nation's capital and we had a blast! Definitely recommended if you've never experienced it before - so much to do and the fireworks on Parliament Hill were a spectacular end to the trip! Now after a little much needed R&R, we're back and down to fulfilling the final condition of our offer - the home inspection.
It’s a good day to buy a house!
Sometimes to get what you want, you have to be willing to walk away - which is exactly what we did when offer negotiations with the seller of the house we wanted reached a stalemate. After flat out rejecting our initial offer (which was admittedly WELL below his rather inflated asking price), it was pretty clear that talks between his agent and ours were going nowhere fast.
This might be the one…
So after expanding our search area, we've found an interesting property in the West Shore neighbourhood. The house itself isn't much to look at. In fact it probably hasn't been updated much since it was built in 1962. Now in saying that we don't mean the cool 'retro chic 60s', we mean circa 1962 textured plaster walls, parquet & vinyl floors, avocado tub in the bathroom - we're talking full on time machine the second you walk through the door. Not exactly what you might envision us looking for in our dream house.
SOLD!
Up and down in less than 48 hours....and here we were all geared up to endure at least a couple weeks of stress around keeping the house in immaculate 'show ready' condition. When we listed the house, we thought we were a little bit on the ambitious side in terms of our asking price. After reviewing the past sales and comparable properties in our area, we had an idea of what we were hoping to sell for and naturally priced ourselves slightly above that to leave some room for negotiation. What we really didn't imagine was that the house would go OVER asking or that things would get wrapped up so quickly and easily.
Officially on the market!
So in between all the property hunting, we've been busy prepping our place for sale. Now after several weeks of painting, carpeting, cleaning and de-cluttering, it's nice to be able to say that our house is officially on the market! It's been a long and laborious process, but we made it to the finish line. All the papers have been signed and submitted so we should hit MLS by sometime tomorrow - just in time for the weekend!
Seeing the potential…
With our dream mapped out, we set off in search of the perfect property. But after getting outbid on a house in our ideal Pickering area of Rosebank South, we decided to widen our search a bit to include the neighbourhoods of West Shore. Rosebank South is one of Pickering's more exclusive neighborhoods that essentially contains one of two things: older, reasonably priced bungalows; and renovated custom homes priced in and around the million dollar range. Because of its proximity to the lake, larger lot sizes, and higher property values, this tends to be a high demand area. Of course, that makes snagging a property pretty difficult - especially at the entry level.