Condo Update

Happy June! It’s quite hard to believe that it’s June already! And it’s raining. That makes it even more strange. Anyway, I wanted to give an update about our market situation. It’s been about 45 days since we listed the place for sale. We get calls from agents frequently- sometimes up to three or four times each week- that want to show it to their clients, so we’ve been on our toes keeping the place clean and tidy. Overall, the responses have been positive. Our realtors forward the agents’ feedback to us and so far, there haven’t been any negative remarks (with exception of one person who had an issue with the electrical tower on the other side of the parking lot… whatever). We’ve had one official offer- which was more than $50K under our asking price!! Because they were not willing to negotiate, we had no other choice but to outright refuse the offer.

Other than that, we have also had a few unofficial offers. I say this because we originally bought the condo through a first-time homebuyer program offered through the city of Walnut Creek. And therefore, we have to attempt to resell it to another buyer who qualifies for the same program. Unfortunately, many interested parties are not first-time buyers or make far too much money to qualify for the program. Therefore, our potential pool of buyers is limited. But, lucky for us, the program limitations expire after 90 days if we are unable to find a buyer who qualifies. So, as of mid-July, we can sell the condo to anyone. It’s starting to look like we’ll have to wait it out until then. But we’re not getting discouraged just yet, since we’re in no rush to sell and move up. I am still working on some loose ends with my thesis, so it’s nice to still be close enough to the city when I need to head over to campus (if we were in Brentwood by now, it would probably add at least another 30 minutes onto my hour-long commute into SF). And our realtors already have interested parties lined up to potentially make us an offer once the limitation expires. So that’s good news.

We’re relieved that the kids have been happy and content with all of the showings so far. We usually close them away in our extra bedroom for a few hours when we know that an agent plans to stop by. We have their food and water dishes in there with them, along with their kitty box and a nice smelly plug-in thing that I found at Target. I also made a nice sign for the door asking guests to help us keep them inside. And luckily we haven’t had any problems or complaints so far. They’re such friendly cats to begin with, that I doubt they would ever do anything anyway.

So now, we just continue waiting I guess… In the meantime, I have found some killer places in and around Brentwood that we can definitely afford and be happy with. Some even with a pool!  We also decided to expand our search to other areas closer to our current location that we might be able to afford, like Pleasant Hill, Clayton, and Martinez. Of course these areas are higher in price and we would be buying a smaller home, but we’re just trying to keep our options open. I’ll keep everyone updated.