Just another move in the great and grand tradition of home selling. Our prospective buyer had her inspection today, and there are “issues” of “concern” that she will “have to sleep on.” Specifically, the water heater is blah-blah-blah. Interesting to me that when *I* pay for the inspection, everything is fine. When she pays for the inspection, there are issues.
The reality, of course, is that this is just part of the dance. What happens here is that she squeezes a little (buy a new water heater or I walk!). I then get defensive and vaguely negative (well, I’m moving out. If I do this job, I’ll just lowball it. What if I give you some amount of money to do it yourself?). She then nods sagely and names a price. I assert that that’s it and that’s all, and we have to really have a deal here, because I’m not putting up with any more of this crap. Squeeze now or forever hold it. I’ll give you some other price.
Then we agree to it because the money we’re talking about is well under the noise floor in this deal. A water heater, installed, costs around $400. I’m paying more than that for a lawyer to nod sagely and tell me that the standard forms at the closing are standard. Bah.
If the inspection had gone really poorly, I would be scrambling right now (roof falling in, major pest infestation, something like that). If the inspection had gone *really* poorly, the call today wouldn’t have been this cagey “I need to sleep on it,” it would have been “I’m calling my option and backing out of the deal.” From the folks I’ve spoken to, it’s somewhat traditional to demand a new water heater when you buy a house. 🙂
Still stressful though.
In other news, I’ve now installed and updated three laptops in as many days. Seems that my group is finding that a good way to get the laptops updated and re-synchronized is to make me use a different one every night. Everyone has to know, by this point, that if hardware passes through my hands…I’ll do my best to cross the ‘i’s and dot the ‘t’s.
Leave a Reply