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An unexpected war started today, a war that hit very close to home - well, directly. We had our first open house showing after a private showing had fallen through yesterday and, we got two offers within 10 minutes of the very short showing slot ended, both offering our asking price. While I was confident it would go well enough, I didn't think that we might have actually undervalued the property. 

One of the bidders is coming back first thing in the morning to check again to see if they want to up their bid a little as the second has. At this point, I don't mind so much as we were ready to see under the asking price anyway - but considering our renovation work, it is a decent place and priced to go. What I am hoping is that due to the competition, they don't get cold feet and I perhaps would rather just take the more stable of the offers. But then, we would very much need anything extra we can get - so let them go to war. 

![IMG_20200202_120505.jpg](https://files.steempeak.com/file/steempeak/tarazkp/PIgihBrE-IMG_20200202_120505.jpg)

This does bode well for our meeting with a bank for the renovation loan though, as one of the major concerns for all of the banks when it comes to money for renovation is whether it is going to be well spent. Normally, I don't think they care, but it seems that they have become a bit more cautious here of late, as perhaps they have been burned by people's decisions. It seems that enough people can spend a lot of money without adding much value. 

We will now have some ammunition to prove that we are not those kinds of people, as we have been able to increase the value of our own apartment significantly with minimal monetary input - apparently. When it comes to houses, sweat equity is the only way to really get value that will go above what is spent on costs, including the taxes and the inflation rate. With this, I hope it is enough to secure a loan for us - if not, we will definitely need any extra from the sale price on our apartment, to get ourselves off to a start with the larger renovation work. 

I don't like this part of the buying and selling and I am looking forward to it being over as soon as possible so that we can move onto the next phase, which is where I can get my hands dirty with the reno work. We were estimating that we would sell within two months at the outside, but knew that we might get lucky early due to the lack of similar in our area. This means that we might be able to up the schedule on the other place also.

What we are planning to do in order to speed up operations, is to allow the people at the house we are purchasing to move their stuff to a single room instead of move it out all at once. This way we could potentially move in and get started earlier, or get started a little before we move in, depending on what happens with our own place. Either way, it could give us an unexpected head start on proceedings.

As I said to my wife tonight though, *don't count your chickens til they have hatched,* as I know that these kinds of deals can quickly go awry, where someone says something and then contradicts themselves with the next tweet... 😂 But yeah, we are hoping that this goes through sooner, rather than later and all the necessary papers are signed, sealed and delivered fast. 

Is it Sunday today? It doesn't feel like this was a weekend at all...

Taraz
[ a Steem original ]

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