Who has two thumbs and a big ol’ case of the Mondayyyyyzzzz?!? THIS GIRL!!
I can’t complain too much, as Mondays are not nearly as dreadful as they used to be, but they still cause a heck of a funk even though I’m essentially in charge of myself, which is a kinda scary in itself.
I just had to share these fun, floral palazzo pants with you all before everyone is full on into sweater and boots season;) I actually wore this outfit on the plane when we went to Mexico, and I can’t tell you all how many compliments I got from perfect strangers standing in the security lines and whenever I went to the restroom. And a lot of these compliments came at like 6am….I didn’t think people were usually this chipper and complimentary that early in the morning. Who woulda thunk it?!
I ended up hemming the pant legs, since I’m a shorty and that’s what I have to do to almost all of my new pants and denim;) They are super comfy and fun to wear. I think they’d look great dressed up a bit too….maybe with a strapless top and some fun and flirty pink strappy heels?
Last mini life update I posted was about our house situation (if you missed it, you can catch up here;)). I’d left off after the first showing with my realtor friend’s buyers….well actually just the wife had seen it, and she loved the house and was planning to bring her hubby back the next day.
She brought him back the next day as planned, and he too loved the house (yay!). Then I got an update from my friend (again, she’s their realtor) saying that they wanted to come back to our house again the following day, and then check out one more property before making their final decision. My friend has been working with them for a while and they had not come remotely close to making an offer on any other house, so she felt like our house was indeed the one that checked all their boxes, and it seemed they felt the same way. We were unable to let them come back the following day (Saturday), as Michael and I actually had a few appointments of our own to look at houses, so we set up the third showing for Sunday.
So that Saturday night (between their second showing on Friday, and the next scheduled showing on Sunday), the couple had told my friend that they no longer needed to see the other property, and only wanted to see our house again (YAY!) and then they were going to spend the day after the showing checking out our neighborhood amenities and country club. So basically they had narrowed down their top choices to our house.
On Sunday morning, I de-furred the house once again, and cleaned so well that it looked as though no actual humans reside here. I loaded up the dogs into my little SUV with several wet towels and bottles of water in tow so they didn’t overheat (even with the AC on full blast), and spent a solid hour and a half parked under a tree a few blocks away while this couple looked over our house, and took tons a pics according to my friend. Again, our house is not actually on the market, so there aren’t any pics online that they could refer to, so I totally get them wanting to snap a bunch of pics.
After the showing my friend said they were still super excited about the house, and looking forward to spending the afternoon exploring the neighborhood. So all seemed to be going great. They were happy with the price point, the updates we did, the location was exactly what they were looking for, the view, the layout, etc etc. Everything was working out for all of us, as we had actually found a house we really liked across town and figured we’d make an offer once we got an acceptable offer on our place. While I do really love our house and our view, we originally moved to this part of town for the good schools, and since we’ve decided not to start a family with human kids, we don’t need to be as deep in the Charleston burbs as we are. And again, the dog/fence situation with our current neighbors is not ideal (I touched on this in my previous post). This couple does not have a dog, so it shouldn’t be an issue for them.
Anyway, the following morning (Monday) I got a text from my friend, and instead of it being about an offer (as I was expecting), she was asking if I could offer any insight or reassurance to the buyers who had sent her an email basically saying everything was perfect until they decided to drive by our house at night. Let me first say that our neighborhood, like most neighborhoods that have been developed from the late 90s to present, have buried power lines. So since we don’t have big ass utility poles throughout the neighborhood with giant bright street lights attached, the community instead has tasteful street lamps that sort of fit with the Old Charleston Charm theme. They’re not overly bright, so as not to cause light pollution or a nuisance for residents living in the nearby houses. One of said street lamps happens to be in the front yard of our next door neighbor’s house, so it’s kind of situated between her house and our house. The light is basically invisible to us, as we’ve never given it a second thought. It in no way shines into our house, and it’s not in front of our house, so we never notice it. However, to according to these crazy buyers, this light is like a total deal breaker:
"We drove through **X neighborhood** in the dark and saw the lamplights that are haphazardly laid out on the roads. Too few to be streetlights, and too oddly spaced to be walkway
lights. Then we got to the house. Talk about a let down. The 15 foot? 7000 mega watt tower of light in the front yard with no tree to hide it or diffuse the light. What was the
town or community thinking when they put these up? Is there anything that can change with this light? We had convinced our selves that the view of the neighbor's garage could be
minimized, as we live out the back of the house. The light killed that conviction. It's just so there."
Like whaaa??? First of all, literally alllll I find myself doing since this ‘issue’ was first brought to my attention is looking at the street lamps all over town to see if our neighborhood is any different than the others in the area. From what I’ve seen so far, it’s not. Even the street lamps on the main roads and highways outside of all the neighborhood developments have the same type of street lamps, and they’re all spaced quite a bit apart. Second, I would much rather that they had hated the house from the get go, or hated something that actually mattered instead of wasting our time. I truly do not understand people and could never deal with this sort of irrational thinking, but my friend kindly offered to put a tree up for them to block the imaginary light that they think shines into our home. And which is it, lady?? There aren’t enough lights according to you, but you’re also upset that there’s one near your potential new home?? And for the record they’re not oddly spaced. They’re placed about every four houses, and then we’re all required to have some sort of yard lamp as part of our ARB standards. Sorry, I just have to rant bc I seriously do not understand this at allll!
The light that “killed their conviction” haha
The offensive garage across the street. To be fair, we were pretty annoyed when this spec house was built, as per our neighborhood’s architectural standards, garage doors can’t be a prominent feature of the front elevation of the house, so most of us have side-loading garages. This house also has a side loading garage, but unfortunately they put the garage on the street side, instead of the other side of the house. However, the other neighborhood that these buyers were looking into all have big garage doors front and center on the houses, so if they end up building or buying there, they’ll be seeing a lot more of these;)
So they were originally expecting to make a final decision by last Tuesday, but instead dragged their feet all week and then sent another email to my friend this past Friday notifying her they’re no longer interested in our home….because of the freaking light and the front view of our neighbor’s perfectly tasteful garage.
We are disappointed, as the green house (house and back view) were wonderful. We both could see us living there. But we both felt the same about the street view/light. To be clear, you can tell the owners it's a no. And you can tell them it is because of the view of the garage and the light - all of which are unchangeable and nothing to do with their home...we just want to be sure and happy with everything that matters to us. As far as putting a tree up it would have to be a 15 foot one at least or living with the light in the windows for years before it grew. The point here is that we were trying to shake the street stuff/view negativity (that we felt) but the light killed that for both of us. Maybe we are too
picky."
Love how she closed with “maybe we’re too picky.” Ummm….ya think?! And the stuff that really matters to them is stuff that actually doesn’t matter at all, and in no way affects the experience of living here. I suppose this is when a seller’s agent would come in handy, as we’d get the sugar-coated version of this since we’d have a middle man;)
At that point since they’d waited so long to follow up, we had already mentally prepared for a ‘no-go,’ so really all Michael and I could do was laugh at the ‘light that killed their conviction.” They wanted marsh front living, specifically wanted to live in our neighborhood (apparently before they came at night and saw the street light sitch lol), they were looking for mostly one story living with high ceilings and an open floor plan, a white kitchen with gray walls….all of which is exactly what we have.
I’m guessing these folks aren’t from around here, so maybe they’ll figure things out eventually, but we know from our own house hunting experience when we bought this house that it’s tough to find marsh front properties in Charleston that check all your other boxes, so most people end up compromising either with the house, or the neighborhood in order to get a good marsh view (unless you have about a million dollars to drop on a house, which we definitely do not haha). This is also why we made an offer on our current home the day it went on the market. We knew it wouldn’t last long, and our realtor had to be very strategic to ensure we got it, as other offers poured in after we made ours (as she predicted). It worked out well that the previous owners had built it less than a year prior, and were moving due to work, so we actually purchased it from a relocation company and they accepted the first reasonable offer, which thankfully was ours….but I digress.
Now back to the current situation….despite me explaining that the light in no way impacts the experience of living in our house, her buyers were still convinced that they would have to “live with the light in the windows for years.” So my friend sent them a video I took of the inside of our house at night, which is basically a pitch black video bc you can’t even see a glow coming through our front or side windows, even with the blinds open and curtains drawn, unless I am literally filming like two feet in front of the window. I have no idea what their response was to the ‘video evidence,’ but I kind of don’t care at this point, as it’s probably a blessing in disguise that we don’t have to do business with them.
So yada yada yada….we’re back to the drawing board and looking for signs to tell us what the right move is (staying or moving). We did a bunch of yard work on Sunday (yesterday), and afterwards I was standing on the back deck watching over our doggies who were sniffing around the yard. We have tons of white tail deer in the area, so you can often hear them trudging through the water in the marsh, and I could hear at least one of them while I was standing out there. The marsh grass is taller than the deer, so you usually can’t see them unless they’re like right on the edge of our property, but all of a sudden at least a dozen white tail deer of all sizes started leaping across the marsh in unison. It was amazing, and absolutely beautiful to watch, and totally gave me chills. They looked just like a pod of dolphins leaping out of the ocean to catch a breath. I so wished I’d had my phone on me to capture at least the tail end of it, but instead of scrambling to run and grab it, I sat and enjoyed the view while coming to the realization that staying in this house wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. Far from it, actually.
Thanks so much for reading my little real estate rant! What sort of crazy stories do you all have about buying and selling?? I’d love to hear them!
In the meantime…you all have a great week!
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