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Thursday 24 February 2022

Real Estate Highs and Lows

As I mentioned in my previous post, Whitesnake and I decided to sell our home last year. Our real estate agent organised what is know in New Zealand as a caravan, to come through our home for a visit. Basically, this means all the agents from his company come through the house at the same time for a viewing of the property, before it goes to the market for sale.

Later on the same day, our agent informed us that one of the agents would like to make an offer on the house before it went on the market and if we accepted his offer, we would not be charged marketing costs. He made us a great offer and we were happy to save a little money on costs so we accepted it. We signed an agreement and were thrilled that we sold our home without the hassle of open homes, etc. A little while later, our agent phoned us to let us know he had been fired. We were shocked and extremely concerned. Apparently, he had been warned several times not to sell a house, without showing it to the market first. His manager called to apologise and set up a meeting to explain.

A couple of days later, the manager met with us and again was very apologetic. He explained that if the house had gone to the market, we would have received a lot more money than we had sold it for. So the agent that bought the house got a bargain but we had lost a significant amount of money. Thankfully, he didn't charge us the rather large seller's fee so in the end, we actually saved about the same amount we were short on the sale. We were happy with the result.

I must say I learned a lot from the experience. My gut feeling at the time had been that something wasn't quite right but Whitesnake and I had been offered a deal we thought at the time, we would be crazy to refuse. I now rely much more on my gut feeling and am not as naïve to believe everybody is as trustworthy as I am. 

More about our journey soon.

Love KB

xxx

Sunday 20 February 2022

Time for a big change

 Hi all,

Just over a year ago, Whitesnake and I decided to sell our house and move from Auckland to The Bay of Plenty. 

It wasn't a decision we took lightly. Whitesnake's side of the family live in Australia and my parents live about a three hour drive away in The Bay of Plenty. My parents are retired now and Whitesnake and his family suffered the devastating loss of a brother. Unfortunately, due to covid, we were unable to travel to Australia to attend Whitesnake's brother's funeral or visit my parents in their retirement village. As you can image, this took quite a toll on us. 

So, out of curiosity, Whitesnake organised a house appraisal from out local real estate agent and to our surprise, the value of our house had more than doubled since we purchased it about eight years ago. That was all the encouragement we needed to put our house on the market.   

More about our journey soon.


Love KB

xxx

Tuesday 1 February 2022

It's only been two years

 Hi all,

Wow, I haven't posted for over two years!

There's been a lot happening. Obviously, Covid hit and changed the way we function in this world. Also, Whitesnake and I decided to sell our house and move to a different province. Now we're settled, I thought it was time to return to blogging on a regular basis. I have lots to blog about and heaps of photos to share. 

See you again soon,


Love KB

xxx