A Game Of Cat And Mouse

Everything is flawed. A BMW may have many perks, but it only has to lack a coin tray to be imperfect. Pamela Anderson is cute, I’m told, but she’s permanently diseased. Malibu has an amazing wave, but it’s crawling with pricks. So, anyone who’s ever been on the market for a car, a woman or a sweet surf spot knows that we tend to overlook the cons and really play up the pros.

BMWs scream between 4500 and 6000 rpm, and with that power, we’ll pocket the change. Pam will do things wives won’t, and she isn’t camera shy, so we’ll get all the immunizations we need. And if we just become one of those assholes at Malibu, then everything’s gonna be alright.

The chances of a house being everything we want are astronomically against. If only the upstairs had better insulation. If only it had a farm sink in the kitchen. If only the basement had a full height ceiling. We may rationalize and we may even fix things we don’t like, but dammed to hell if we aren’t going to take those imperfections to the negotiating table to leverage down what we’re willing to pay.

And this is where the disconnect in the real estate game takes place. Sellers don’t want to hear about the flaws. They don’t even want to face them, especially if they’re selling something that isn’t as strong. So sellers and buyers circle the ring for quite some time before engaging in the actual skin to skin combat, and neither wants to engage from the weaker position.

Take the house we’re looking at. The sellers came onto the market at a pretty inflated price of $550,000. Can’t blame them, I guess. Fools and money do part from time to time. And there’s no shortage in Seattle of fools. Or money. But by coming out at such a high-hopes price, they’re risking losing an amount of credibility when the house doesn’t move.

Reducing the price of anything carries an amount of desperation, a wacky clown-and-balloons-sales-event flavor. A Ford dealer will have a “Super Slammy Sales Saturday,” but BMW is more likely to treat their inventory reduction efforts with much more care, and with a deeper voice, perhaps an English accent. Doing so retains their credibility, their brand bargaining power, the power that BMW doesn’t bargain, because their car is worth all the money they’re asking.

After two price drops, to $529k and then to $499k, the clown is in front of the house we want to buy, dancing in a yellow polka dot suit and flipping a sign in the air. There’s a string of balloons stretching into the sky, and happy families are jogging along the sidewalk to see.

But the clown is really a young wildebeest limping around in the front yard. The balloons are drops of blood scenting the air. And the happy families are people like us sensing a weakness in their game. And the last thing the seller wants to do is sit at the table where they have to face the claws and teeth. Best-case scenario is that new and friendlier animals happen along unaware of the damaged and vulnerable seller.

The seller knows we want the house. And if we’re the only ones at the table, and after 120 days on the market, it’s unlikely they’ll chase us away entirely. And knowing they’ve flip flopped between a clown sale and a special investment incentive, we can smell the panic.

In the waiting game, they’ve come back with the idea of a pre inspection, meaning, getting an inspection done before the offer goes in. Tim explained it’s intended to get all the facts on the table so that the seller has a grasp of the Net, and doesn’t have to take a hit to the agreed upon selling price during the post offer acceptance inspection.

Sounds fishy to me. What I see is our paying for an inspection so that they will know what’s coming when a real inspection hits, avoid a sale falling through, get the info, patch up what the inspection finds, don’t negotiate on anything and we’re left footing the bill.

That would be easy to believe, if I could convince myself that the seller hasn’t already done an inspection on their own. With half a million oysters on the line, how could they not prepare by doing an actual inspection themselves?

But then, there’s always plausible deniability. What they can claim they don’t know about, they can sell. Meaning they can sell a bad electrical system if they can claim they never knew about it. An inspection would blow that. Wouldn’t it?

I spoke with Tim, and said that if the seller will put out there that a pre inspection will bring them to actually negotiate, we’ll do it, because then, if they don’t work on the price after saying they would, that would be sticky, right? Right?

Lia’s aching to get to the table with the sellers. But the game of cat and mouse continues. Today she came across another ad from a different agent offering the same house. Same price. What does that mean?

Time To Buy A House

At no point in my life had I ever taken seriously the notion of buying a house. Like choosing a college and working toward an actual major, I just didn’t know anything about it, had never had any examples or guidance on the matter, and so never perceived it as something that pertained to me. Which is why my collegiate career careened in such an interesting and drawn out manner.

I chose my college courses by two criteria; whether attractive girls were enrolled, or if I had any personal interest in the subject matter. I suspect I looked at property in much the same way – with criteria not involving things that matter in the long run - market analysis, value speculation, upgrades and such.

In Los Angeles, Lia and I would hop into the occasional open house, as they were popping up in our neighborhood as the economic downturn war drums started. I was simply intrigued how the other half lived, sort of a voyeuristic curiosity. I think Lia, on the other hand, was taking close notes and gleaning what knowledge she could from anywhere she could.

Lia also kept tabs on mortgage trends, rates and sales statistics. Her head works the way cats do in a way. Cats instinctively chase things that move, and Lia is the same with numbers. If an 8 bolts down to a 2, Lia pounces.

Friends of ours bought a house near Venice Beach, in the Mar Vista neighborhood. It was a little fixer on a giant lot. I heard talk of fixing up the house, and then building an apartment complex in their back yard. I scoffed about it, thinking there was no way. But in surrealistic fashion they did it, at times scraping the earth with their own fingernails. I simply couldn’t wrap my head around it. It wasn’t enough that a large majority of our friends were getting knocked up, and Lia and I weren’t even close, but now they’re building real estate with their own hands. Next, I suspect, they’ll be starting countries.

Lia lived in the same two houses growing up, one built by her grandfather, and the other built by her father. I can only imagine what a motivating factor that is in someday getting a home of her own. I don’t even know how many different places I’ve lived in, at least all ten fingers and all ten toes. My longest stay in any one place was 5 years – my Pasadena bungalow. I was 32 when I started that.

When we moved to Seattle we started looking at property. It was fun in all the excitement of being in a new city. And we weren’t very efficient, often arguing more about being lost than what property we liked.

Once we got around to actually looking at places, the rule of marriage kicked in. I found that if I looked at a place, and said anything about liking it, Lia hated it. If I didn’t like it, for reasons such as blood-stained carpeting, Lia would rave. I learned to refrain from forming any sort of emotional reaction, which confused Lia, and forced her to form her own poker face. Ultimately we were our own worst enemy.

The first real estate agent we spent any time with we met in a condo office. There we met a girl, dressed in a kinda-buttoned blouse and wearing a thigh length skirt. To say she was hot would be a below sub under statement. The girl was dripping sex, oozing it like one of those chocolate fountains you see at expensive Sunday buffets. It was hard to take her seriously. And being married for a while now, I know better than to speak with a girl like this for any reason. It’s just inviting trouble.

But she started emailing me listings, checking in and asking if there is anything she can do for us. I was impressed by her dedication. We took her up on viewing a condo, and when we arrived, she was in tight slacks framing what can only be defined as an “as-seen-on-TV” ass. From that point on, Lia just didn’t seem interested in any listings she sent us, no matter how nice they were. It culminated in “why does she always email YOU the listings?”

Well, as flattered as I was by Lia’s inference to the Realtor’s steamy lust for yours’ truly, I wisely let that whole phantom ship slip beneath the waves without much fanfare. No matter how much I liked the listings she sent me, I just let that sleeping dog lay.

There were a few other Realtors we met, saw a house or two with, but it wasn’t until one of Lia’s co-workers connected us with her own Realtor boyfriend that we really invested ourselves in one. Tim blew us away with his version of “shock and awe,’ a full frontal assault in real estate confidence, knowledge and upbeat optimism. And, he dresses like he really knows what he’s doing, which I know scored major points with Lia.

By the time we met Tim, Lia and I had tried the full court press it takes to keep up with house shopping. Having someone who knows as much as Tim does, and someone we felt we could trust was huge for us. Were Lia and I to have had one more fight about something house hunt wise, we would have made the police blotter, and my body would probably never be found.

My life has always been zero to 60 in crushingly short periods of time. It’s Saturday night, and Lia and I are expecting to hear tomorrow if our counteroffer counteroffer is accepted. I can’t believe it, and it’s so strange to think we could be this close.




The first time we saw this house must have been four or five months ago. We were driving aimlessly through unknown neighborhoods, scanning the long streets for signs when Lia spotted it. I was whining about something, the rain, I was hungry, tired, whatever, and when we pulled up in front of the house, I rolled my eyes knowing it was out of our league. There was no way I was getting out. Lia jumped out, I think while the car was still moving, and gave it a full walk around. There was some sort of construction or demolition going on next door.

Lia got back in the car and told me the price, just a new 5 Series over half a mil. Jeez, that was, what, 40 hours with Spitzer’s hooker over our budget. Before pulling away, I did give the house a real look, and for an instant enjoyed a brief vision of living in a house like that. I recall it looked beefy, solid, tall, and had lots of glass.

Lia, being the smart one between us, or at least the conscious one, paid close attention to local and national market trends, our own finances, and listing behaviors. She spotted the house when it resurfaced on Redfin four months and two price reductions later. Assuming I give up my taste for expensive scotch, and Lia gives up her heroin habit, we can now afford it. I’m kidding, I don’t really drink scotch.

The house originally sat on two lots. The current sellers bought it, subdivided the lot, sold the other half, and are now selling the remaining half with the house. They originally listed the house at $549,000, which is what the sellers paid for the two pieces of property under a year ago. They dropped the price, twice, resting at $499,000 in February. After extensive study, Lia established the house to actually be worth $450k. That’s what we offered. They countered with $499,000, we counter countered with $470,000, a $20,000 increase, which is a pretty big step. It’s Sunday afternoon now, and they counter counter countered with $498k.

That’s pretty strange, but kind of consistent in Seattle – people seem to be hanging on to the notion that Seattle is immune to the national downward spiral in property values, or it seems they’ve banked on it. Where I want to be is a fly on the wall, there for the conversations between flippers and real estate agents over time, from the honeymoon stages through the slamming doors and unreturned phone calls.

Naturally, investors want to buy in low and sell high – from Tupperware distributors, to cocaine dealers. Of course there’s a lot of optimism at the onset of a deal: “This is going to be great! Easy money!” Now, flipping property at the onset of a recession is risky business. Buying a big chunk of land and splitting it is a good bet, but slapping a $550k price tag on a $450k property when your profit margin is pretty transparent? Dunno.

I suppose if the sellers have the cash to ride out an economic slump, they can wait for overall housing prices to bounce back to the $500k range, which I don’t think will hit that particular street for a long time after that. Bush says there isn’t going to be a recession, however all the indicators are pointing to a really nasty fall. Is Seattle that immune? Boeing just lost a pretty big deal it had seen as locked, and that domino is a big one. We’ll have to see how Seattle holds up.

For now we hit the bricks again, which is pretty exciting, as houses appearing on the market now are much more polished and at lower prices than the house we bid on. With any luck the sellers of this property will see the writing on the wall, in the form of all the other houses they’ll be competing with. And perhaps our bid won’t look so bad after all.