{"id":19,"date":"2008-03-15T21:26:48","date_gmt":"2008-03-16T04:26:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ahousebythepark.com\/journal\/?p=19"},"modified":"2008-08-15T21:38:55","modified_gmt":"2008-08-16T04:38:55","slug":"so-close","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ahousebythepark.com\/journal\/archive\/2008\/03\/15\/so-close\/","title":{"rendered":"So Close!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So it&#8217;s been several months now and the Seattle real estate market in the middle of winter appears to be an extremely quiet place. I&#8217;ve looked at hundreds of listings which continue to come up every week, drove by about 20 of them, and went inside of only five. Since I am already comfortable in my condo, there is no need to jump on a property unless it is perfect.<\/p>\n<p>Yesterday, however, my agent took me to a property which, strangely, has been on the market for about six months and yet I never remember seeing.  It turns out the photos of the property that the realtor uploaded online were so awful that I wrote the place off months ago without even checking out the specs.  It&#8217;s an old 1950s tear-down on a huge 15,000 square foot lot with a great water view in the exact area I want to be in! After touring the property, I instructed my agent to contact the selling agent and feel out the situation. The price has already dropped about $500,000 since it was originally listed and I&#8217;m wondering what price would make it mine.<\/p>\n<p>To my unfortunate surprise, it turns out an offer was accepted <em>today<\/em>, a full six months after it went on the market.  Man, I am so mad I didn&#8217;t find this earlier.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Lesson: Don&#8217;t let online photos dissuade you from checking out a property in person.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It turns out this place is an estate sale and there are 10 beneficiaries, so I am going to put in a &#8220;backup offer&#8221; in case the first offer falls through.  I&#8217;d love to figure out a way to outbid the existing bid and move into first place, but apparently in real estate, it is almost impossible for a seller to get out of a contract unless the buyer is in breach.  Any interference by me could be considered what&#8217;s called <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Tortious_interference\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;tort interference&#8221;<\/a>, which you can be sued for.<\/p>\n<p>Fingers crossed, but not hopeful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So it&#8217;s been several months now and the Seattle real estate market in the middle of winter appears to be an extremely quiet place. I&#8217;ve looked at hundreds of listings which continue to come up every week, drove by about 20 of them, and went inside of only five. Since I am already comfortable in [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ahousebythepark.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ahousebythepark.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ahousebythepark.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ahousebythepark.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ahousebythepark.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ahousebythepark.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ahousebythepark.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ahousebythepark.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ahousebythepark.com\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}