For this condo I sold in San Jose for $675,000, I was the agent for the sellers. I sold this condo to the sellers as their buyer’s agent back in 2007! And, I believe this is the 5th time working with these clients over the years!

Where do I start??? This listing was a doozy!!! Ahhh, so much to say, but I’ll try to keep it to the highlights.

Craziness happened even before the condo was listed. When my clients first reached out about selling this condo, the market was questionable at best for sellers. It was a hard call whether they should even list it for sale or just keep it as a rental until the market was more predictable.

We were going back and forth on if it was even the right time to list it. Another condo came up for sale in the community, the exact model and was getting little to no activity. So, we had a discussion that we surely did not want to compete with another condo just like theirs in this market and if they weren’t getting activity, there’s no logical reason we would do any better. So, we were on the road to not listing at all.

Then one day, the listing agent of that condo said she has a better than normal weekend and had 2 offers at once, and actually was able to get OVER the listed price. Come to find out, 1 offer was over the list price due to the competition, but the other offer was under the list price.

So, they took the over list price offer of course. And, that meant there was an actual buyer interested in this model! So, I went back to these clients to let them know the developments. And, that buyer was interested in the condo, so we thought we had an easy buyer!

Well, turns out, not so easy…The buyer was a VA buyer, and did make an offer, but I personally know that a there are certain things that need to be in order for a VA loan, so I advised my clients that we should not accept the offer until we know the VA will give a loan in this community.

I asked the agent to talk to the lender and make sure the VA would approve this community and that it would be a solid deal.

In the meantime, we decided to list the condo on MLS, knowing we had this buyer who wanted to buy the condo and then to see if there was anyone else out there in case this didn’t pan out.

The open house weekend was extremely slow, basically no real buyers even showed up, so we were very hopeful for the VA buyer. Come to find out, the VA has a requirement that the community is at least 50% owner occupied. And, this community falls short by literally 2 units!

The pending unit was going to be owner occupied, and then this VA buyer was going to be a owner occupant which would bring it up to 50%, but that’s only if the VA would accept this buyer to make it 50% AND we would have to wait for the pending sale to close.

Well, the VA buyer’s agent went MIA, just pretty much stopped communicating, which I thought was a bit rude, but also tells me that they didn’t want to move forward.

So, back to square one. At that point, we were getting just random showings, buyer’s agent calling with questions, and a few saying they thought they would be sending an offer, but then nothing would come of it. And, we did get a low ball offer that we countered, and then they changed their mind and nothing came of that offer.

And, then it went to just basically no showings at all. And, nothing was really happening.

So, once the listing was about to expire, and the sellers didn’t want to lower the price to see if that would spark interest, it seemed to just be a sign to take it off the market and rent it out again.

The listing expired, and within 1-2 days, a buyer’s agent calls me asking about it! He said his buyers had been looking for some time, were very interested, and my thoughts were…Where have you been the last 60 days??? Apparently, they were looking in a lower priced budget, but not finding anything, so were looking a bit higher in price for more options.

I had literally just removed the staging and was about to grab my lockboxes. I let the agent know he was welcome to show it, but the staging was gone, they could check the MLS photos and tour, but physically, it was empty.

He showed it, they loved it, and they made an offer. We negotiated a bit and then came to an agreement.

The transaction itself was a HUGE headache at multiple levels, it seemed nothing went smoothly. The buyer’s agent put in various contingency removal dates, rather than just have all contingencies removed on a date, or maybe 2 dates, but there were like 5 different dates! Who does that??

The buyers wanted updated HOA info since we didn’t have a most recent copy because we were taking it off the market. So, we had the bulk of the HOA docs, but not the last couple months in which we didn’t think we would even sell the place. The HOA was HORRIBLE in getting us the updated docs, so that took FOREVER and many calls, emails, texts, etc.

And, that caused delays in contingency removals not only for HOA, but also the loan.

Once we received all of the HOA docs, the buyers asked for a ridiculous credit because they claimed that the HOA was not financially strong. The HOA gets everything needed done, all is in order, the seller said they are always maintaining the community and it looks great. The sellers are not responsible for the health of the HOA financials, so the answer was a hard “no” for the seller to credit the buyer due to the HOA!

Also, the buyers had a home inspection, which is perfectly fine, but they were SUPER picky about nothing items. I understand if something reasonable comes up, but if it’s just small little maintenance items, not cool! And, they asked for a crazy credit for these little items. The sellers gave a generous credit, just to show they cared and proceed in good faith, but surely not what they asked for, and frankly, they should have never asked.

Also, I was chasing the buyer’s agent to remove their contingencies. None were removed on time, and since there were too many, I was reaching out for every single one, on multiple occasions to get me the contingency removals, or extensions, or whatever applied.

One of the sellers was out of the country, so he had to sign his final docs at the American Consulate. And, the other seller was mostly in the area but travels frequently. So, with all this extra paperwork floating around due to the contingencies and such, it was a lot for myself and my clients to have to sign more than usual paperwork and keep this contract together.

I worked on this listing even well before it was listed. And, then worked on the transaction pretty much every single day until the closing day. It was just one frustration after another. It’s in my top ‘worst transaction experiences ever’ category. The sellers were troupers going through this whole experience from pre-listing, listing, and then this crazy transaction.

But, in the end, we got it done! Praise God!

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