Sold!

January 2014 has been an awesome month. Both my mom and I have managed to close escrow on two properties!

My Grandparents’ House

Originally, my mom was in escrow throughout December 2013 with flippers who decided three days before closing they want to drop their asking price by $200,000! My mom walked away, and her agent put it on MLS at the beginning of this month. A few days later, my mom’s agent held an open house, and over 400 people showed up! By the time my mom met up with her the following week she had a total of 28 offers on the house! She accepted an offer and five days later closed escrow!

We just found out that the buyers are turning around and selling the house because apparently there’s not enough square footage to do what they want. I can’t imagine what they wanted to do, but boy it’s a good thing my mom closed when she did!

My Property

As for me, after trying to sell it for two years and going into escrow twice with buyers backing out at the last minute, I FINALLY sold my property!

Just a little history on this, my grandparents (yes, the same ones whose house we just sold) bought this property for me as a kid with the intent that I would either build on it, or I would sell it and use the money as a down payment on the house. I put the property up for sale at the beginning of 2012 in hopes to do the latter, and shortly after we went into escrow on our home I accepted an offer on the property. It seemed like everything was going good, but the buyer dropped out due to financial difficulties.

We put it back up for sale and while there were many interested buyers, they were turned off by the cost to build (building permits in my county are sadly very expensive). After a year we let the listing expire figuring it wasn’t the time and we’d come back to it later.

Then out of the blue last year, we were contacted by an agent with an offer. We took her on as our new agent since she happens to live right next door to the property, and because of that we felt like she had more of an incentive to get it sold. Unfortunately her buyer fell through halfway through escrow, so the property was once again back on the market.

When I was putting together my annual end-of-the-year survey on December 31, 2013, one of the questions was, “What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?” to which I replied, “My property getting sold! I’ve been in escrow twice and both times the buyer flaked out halfway through.”

I kid you not, about 15 minutes after I typed out that answer I got a phone call from my agent letting me know she had an offer for me! I accepted and starting January 2nd, 2014 I was in escrow for the third time. I signed the title paperwork the day after my mom closed on my grandparents’ house, and on Thursday we officially closed on my property.

Yeah, what an awesome way to start the year!