Yesterday, my daughter made a prediction that, if true, would be another demonstration of how the universe just ties everything together.
The elements to the story include a house on the market longer than expected, a transition of real estate agents, preying and meditation, further money losses, and the merits of positive mental attitude.
Our real estate agent thought we had priced our house to move. She indicated that she had truthfully expected our home to sell in a couple of weeks. In fact, this has been the experience of a couple of our neighbors who had sold their homes on our street. Our house has been on the market now over 5 weeks. We're by no means in panic mode, as the average here is 7.5 weeks. However, there is concern in that home sales in our neighborhood tend to fall into a bimodal distribution - they either sell very quickly or they tend to hang on the market for six months or more... We wanted to make sure we didn't fall into the latter group.
My concern was that our agent, having been one of the Northwest's top agents for many years, was no longer active in real estate and may have missed some of the more modern tricks of the trade. Always a professional, she offered to provide us a referral to a trusted colleague - which she did. We very much appreciated her professionalism throughout this process. Moreover, she is just a very good person.
That said, before turning it over, she gave herself another week. We met last week, and she indicated she'd make calls to new agents for us starting the following Monday. She was going to work her "magic," and she had confided in us that she used to send her husband out to pray on her homes that weren't selling. While she is very well-to-do, I'm sure the pride part of her didn't like the thought of not selling the home. While she may have previously taken her "eye off the ball" on her former spiritual routine, almost immediately after she started praying, we
started having more visitors.
(The very logical type would argue that this may have been coincidental with the impending closure of the school year...)
Still, my wife and I have been
meditating as well.
Yesterday, we had a second meeting with our new real estate agent (the one referred to us by our old real estate agent). At this meeting, the new agent recommended that we drop the listing price of our house and set the expectation that there'd be as much as a 3% delta between selling and asking prices. Combined with the staging that she recommended that we do, we're expecting to take a greater loss on our home than originally anticipated. The purpose of this meeting was to prepare the listing forms to facilitate a smooth transition from our old agent to our new agent.
While the projected selling price of our home is above our original purchase price, we put quite a bit of money into the house to do painting, carpets, floors, plumbing repairs, etc. Even if we get our asking price before the transition, we expect to lose money after real estate commissions...
Prior to the transition from our old agent to our new agent, there was one more party scheduled to come by our house to view it. Because the transition to the new agent was not yet complete, both agents agreed that if this party ultimately purchased the home, it would be our old agent's deal.
They were scheduled to arrive at 5pm. Personally, I had a sinking suspicion that they weren't going to come. In fact, we went out to pick up some sandwiches for dinner, and after returning at 5:30pm, there was no card. I was prepared to just settle in and assume they weren't coming, but my wife
(who has been very optimistic) recommended we eat the sandwiches at the park in case they were late. I agreed, but I honestly still believed that given the timing, any interested parties would simply start cutting the tour short rather than slip the schedules late into the evening.
After we finished eating at the park, we saw a realtor's vehicle out front. We then decided to return to the park to eat cookies (the women in my family ate cookies; the diabetic one (me) sat there longing for one...) We returned to home and they were still there. We then proceeded to take a drive around a neighboring community where we had previously looked at both homes and lots.
At that point, our older daughter said something kind of vague. At first, I thought what she meant was that she got the feeling that we should buy there(which is above our price range). However, when my wife asked for clarification, it was clear that what she was really saying was that she got the feeling that those people were going to buy our house.
I'm sure I've written here about how my wife and I have always said there's something "special" about this daughter, and immediately at that point, I said "well, if you believe that, then now I believe it, too." Sure enough, we got a call that night from our old realtor indicating that these people were interested and that she'd follow up with us in the morning. My wife relayed to our old real estate agent that my daughter had predicted this and asked our real estate agent to continue praying.
Early this morning, I went running with a former coworker and told him about this prediction. I only wish that I had logged this in the blog to time stamp it...
Later this morning, we received a call from our old real estate agent telling us that the wife is very interested but that her husband won't be available to see the property for another few days. As such, our old real estate agent asked us to contact the new real estate agent and delay the transition until Monday. We decided to go with it!
At this point, while I remain a bit "guarded", I have the feeling that this would be a great way for the story to unfold. Lighting the fire under our old real estate agent to get her and her husband to pray; a prediction from my daughter come true; and a lesson learned for me that I should have let my wife's positive energy rub off on me and not have been so pessimistic about someone showing up late. To me, this would just be more evidence (not that I necessarily need any more) to show how the universe is "linked."
