When to deal and when to move on

Sorry I have not posted in a while, but I have been very, very, very, stressed out!

We sold our house and put a contract on a new one we all love (I will post pictures as we organize it). BUT, now the buyers for our house are making all sorts of unreasonable demands. We cannot decide if they are (1) getting bad advice, (2) just ignorant about construction, or (3) trying to force more money out of us.

I think in the future, we will always offer the bare minimum on any negotiation. No matter how fair an offer you make, people want to try to get more. So, the obvious solution is to offer less to begin with. What ever happened to people simply looking at something for what it was?

The other obvious solution is to just tell these people take it or leave it. The stress in dealing with them far out ways the stress of having our house back on the market. On the other hand, if we throw enough money at them, we can move on and get settled in our new house. And, that would completely eliminate all the stress!

Maybe I’ll flip a coin.

Do-it-yourself or hire an expert?

This is a tough call, especially in today’s market. We had to make that call a lot as we were getting our house ready to sell. Here is what we considered:

1. Can I really do a good job on it myself?
2. If I screw it up, how hard will it be to fix the mistake?
3. Can a professional do it a whole lot faster? (And, I include the time required to find someone and wait for them to show up as part of the total repair time.)
4. Could I get hurt doing this? (Like falling from a ladder while painting the trim.)
   

So, for us, we handled all the inside fixes and the yard work. It made sense to hire someone to wash and paint the house. It made sense to hire someone to put in the new dishwasher – they took away the old one plus their work is guaranteed.

And, it definitely makes sense to hire a realtor. Yes, we will have to pay a commission, but it really is well worth it. She can handle the enormous amount of paperwork. She can market it better through the MLS than I could by using a cheap listing service. Most important, she can follow through to make sure the offer really makes it to closing. In today’s mortgage crisis, I do not take anything for granted.