People arguing about religion sound like little boys on the playground, yelling whose dad can beat up whose dad.
The joke is, they’re brothers.
People arguing about religion sound like little boys on the playground, yelling whose dad can beat up whose dad.
The joke is, they’re brothers.
Nice little house. Not big by any standards, but three times the square footage my cottage in Colorado was.
Built in the 50s. Present owner grew up there. Inherited it a few years ago.
House is basically clean and in good shape, but cluttered by six decades of memories. In the basement there are travel mementos, an ancient dishwasher, old toys.
Original asking price: $184,890
My offer 2011-12-05: $165,000. Outrageous! $20,000 less. But I’ve got to stake out some bargaining room. The standard statement: “Seller to remove all personal possessions”.
Seller’s counteroffer the next day: $174,987. Looks like he picked up a calculator and split the difference.
When the realtor told me that evening, I thought, I could go for this. But I told him I wanted to sleep on it. See if I thought of anything else.
The next morning I woke up with a sentence of exact phraseology going through my head.
The ingredients were:
In the morning I wrote the realtor an email. My counter-offer: $170,000; five thousand dollars below the seller’s. Fifteen thousand total below the original asking price, a mere two days previous. What nerve!
I knew the following sentence was a weird thing to say in such formal negotiations, but I stated this exact wording:
After seller takes all possessions he wants from the house, buyer will deal with cleaning up the rest.
A couple hours later, the realtor called me. “You have great intuition!” he said, “It’s accepted! The seller’s rep put a smiley face on her note. You’ve got a house!”
Five thousand dollars, just for asking the right way. That buys all the new appliances!
I do feel shrewd. But if there’s anything to be proud of, it’s coming up with something so win-win.