So I took my mother to meet with the real estate agent (who fortunately for me is a friend of mine) and she put down an initial deposit to show she intends to purchase the house. It's very close to our house, so I can walk over and save gas.
We haven't settled on a price with the seller yet. We offered $10,000 less than the asking price. The house is in good, move-in condition but we are uncertain about the roof. It looks OK but we have no paperwork as to when it was last repaired/replaced.
This endeavor may become phase 2 of Patti's Learning to Negotiate...
The woman selling the house is waiting to hear about a mortgage. She is a buying a house with her daughter in a different town. I didn't realize she was going to need a mortgage. That could slow up the process.
Dang.We had a fun meeting with my friend, and my mother trusts her now that she has gotten to know her.
Phew. We stopped for lunch, then home for a minute.
Next stop was meeting Benny at the fire and smoke-damaged dwelling my mother called home for 52 years. He is going to buy it. He's a contractor who rebuilds houses and sells them.
Benny is a nice guy who was referred to us by the insurance adjuster. We waited a few minutes for him, during which time I took some flagstones from the front yard to use in my own garden.
The surreal part came when the three of us went into my mother's old bedroom. She was looking in the bureau for a key and he and I looked in my father's top dresser drawer, filled with sentimental items, a pocket watch, a wrist watch, stop watches, (my father liked time I guess) cuff links, coins, new packages of shoelaces, handkerchiefs and tons of bow ties.
My father was an old-fashioned guy and sometimes wore bow ties to work. He was from another time and place (born in 1910) and that was him.
I held a super-powered beacon flashlight as Benny looked through my dear father's things from many years ago. Everything was still intact, sitting quietly in a top dresser drawer that always intrigued me when I was little.
Surreal.
