Everything is Negotiable

So the offer was made on Friday, Nikki and Francine sitting on the stoop of the house, the breeze blowing the wildflowers, the boats gliding past into Portland Harbor, and Nikki didn't get laughed off the property, although she said Francine winced -- almost imperceptibly, but it was a wince -- when she heard our price.  But she said she would share it with the sellers.  And I just checked my email and Nikki says there will be counter-offer news tomorrow.  So I haven't fallen totally off the table, out of my dream.  Not yet.

The most interesting part of their discussion was about financing:  the sellers are now offering to finance the whole price, assuming it's a number they like (big assumption since we are now $220K apart...), but the terms, which they say are non-negotiable, are interesting -- $150K down, 15 years, 4.5% interest.  Not terrible, but not optimal either since the downpayment would take a big chunk of the $$ I was planning to put into the house, the length is twice as long as I had hoped to get, and the interest rate, incredibly, is higher than I could get on the open mortgage market.  Of course, to say something is non-negotiable when you've been trying to sell a house for 7 months seems foolish, naive, perhaps even an oxymoron.  As far as I'm concerned, at this point, EVERYTHING is negotiable, particularly since their willingness to finance works greatly in their favor:  someone else -- ME -- buys the house and takes over all the problems that the city could confront them about, which they, in the 9th decade of their lives, understandably have no desire to deal with.

But it is also appealing to me, assuming I truly want to buy the house, because it would allow me to buy it soon (and move in!!), without having to jump through financing hoops, and then have a little time to figure out how to fix it up and get it to meet the city's standards before the code enforcement officers were banging down my door.  Obviously lots of negatives too -- have to find another way to get the $$ to do the fix up (who else will loan me $100K??) and the responsibility for all the fixes could turn out to be a lot to handle.  (That last statement, I'm sure Nikki would say, could be the understatement of the decade that I am committed to living there.)  But if I want to buy it, if I want to create this life for Kanha and me, maybe this is the way to make it happen.

Tonight Kanha and I watched Last Chance Highway on Animal Planet and fantasized about the dog -- she: big, hairy, slobbery;  me: tiny, non-shedding, house-trained -- we'll get once we have our own place to live.  Whoever we get -- Pepsi or Hope or Champagne or Spot -- I'm sure will love the big house with the view.