At the airport this morning... Sorry your flight is full. . . . "Would you be willing to assist in case of an emergency and sit in an emergency exit row?" Man... this is like the 3rd time in the last 4 flights this has happened to me.... Anyway, going up to Brissie now. First on the plane. Do you have stories of luck you'd like to share? My other recent good luck story is of buying the new home... If I wasn't driving at that time of day with the partner we wouldn't have stopped to see what that open house sign was about and therefore would not have bought it..... there's nothing too wrong with what I currently own and live in but this is just icing....
Our recent PPoR purchase on Dec 29... Driving back from a 3 day break over at Port Arlington, wife decides to check r/e.com on her phone for any possible new listings in our targeted area for next PPoR. This is approx 4.30pm. She spots a house for sale in one of our "shortlist streets" near the beach, calls the Agent (one of our customers and also a friend) immediately - for an inspection. It has been on the website for not even 1 hour at this stage; we are the first inquiry - I guess everyone else was down the beach and not looking at houses or r/e windows that day. Inspect the house the next day at 10.00am - they were going there for photos and to show the r/e team through as it was a new listing, so tag along and have a look at the same time. Made an offer to the Agent at 11.00am. While we were sitting in the Agents office doing all this; his phone rang - it was the Vendor - he had just spoken to the next door neighbor (who he knew) and was going to sell it to the neighbor - the Vendor didn't know we were sitting with the Agent at this stage, about to make an offer (if it goes ahead; no commission for the Agent)...game over, and we are all devastated. The Agent told the Vendor he had a buyer with him, about to make a firm offer - no good; the Vendor is selling to the guy next door. I thought the Agent was going to have a heart attack right in front of us. A bit more talking, commiserating etc - then the Agent's phone rings again 5 mins later; it's the Vendor again! - the neighbor has decided to pull out already!! So, our offer goes in - countered with a request for $5k more - we say OK. Increased offer by $5k at 12.00pm. Accepted. Signed Contract at 2.30pm Dec 30. The luck was looking up the r/e website at 4.30pm....could have done nothing for days and days - and missed out. Fluke of good timing.
Lucks huge. Once missed out on a small house one Saturday because vendor was playing games. So I went to another auction the next weekend with no intention of buying. No one bidded and this asset ended up beng a core foundation asset.
After a loooong battle trying to sell the PPOR that we'd only just built, (long story too), and losing a "dream property" acreage due to not being able to shift ours in time, we had a complete rethink of plans. We didn't want to be in a position of finding another dream property and lose it again not by being able to sell ours, and we couldn't afford to keep ours and chase a dream one. We were convinced that we wanted at least 6 acres and a nice house but it had to be the right on as we would not be moving again for many years. So, we thought we'd buy our first IP whilst trying to sell the PPOR. We had a target suburb in mind and started looking at all the cheapies, every weekend. The plan was to rent it out until PPOR sold, then we'd move into it whilst we looked for the dream acreage, then we could still afford to keep it on as an IP afterwards. After weeks and weeks of viewing every place in the suburb on Saturdays viewings we'd eventually been around all the current stock, had a few offers trumped and was just waiting for new stock to come on each week. We'd seen this 100+ year old Federation weatherboard listed for a few weeks, looked interesting but completely wrong for us. Too expensive, as in not cheap enough or indeed not the kind of property you'd really want as an IP and too expensive to be able to keep on if we fount the dream acreage afterwards, not on land, (it is on the old high street of this suburb), close to the pub and close to the town center. None of which we wanted - we wanted to be out in the sticks with no neighbors! This one Saturday we had a few opens to go see on the morning and a few more on the afternoon with nothing in the middle. The old Federation joint happened to have an open when we had nothing to do for a couple of hours, so we thought we may as well kill some time and have a nosy through it. We walked in the front door, by the time we got to the back door we looked at each other and said "you do realize we have to buy this house?". We put an offer in that afternoon, signed contract the next day then our current house sold the following day and everything settled in the same week 60 days later! That was after 7 months of trying to sell our place and having nothing bud rotten luck (the very first open day of our old house was the day they decided to start trucking B-Doubles up our road to move spoil for the desal plant works who's pipeline ran right through our estate! We had B-doubles at the rate of one every 60 seconds, in both directions, thundering down our road. No amount explaining was able to get prospective buyers passed that, they couldn't hear themselves think during the inspections, nor could they breathe with all the dust. The house was constantly filthy as the new road ended at our house and became a dirt road, so the constant cloud of dust from the trucks blew over our place all day long, it got everywhere. Most stressful time of our lives trying to sell that house. It was weird, literally the day after we signed the contract for the old Federation place, after weeks and weeks of zero interest in our (nobody was even coming to the opens) the buyers of ours turned up out of the blue, they wanted a house in our estate and didn't really care which one, they viewed about 3 in a similar price range to ours that day and we agreed a price on ours that night. I'm not a huge believer in luck and fate etc, but it was so strange how that whole scenario played out. That was 6 years ago....and we still love our home, even though we have had to put a lot of ourselves into it to keep it standing, these old girls need a lot of love when they've had a hard, neglected life.
Omg... we had that exact same feeling on the house we just bought! We had no plans at all to buy it (or anything to be honest)... right time, right place. (And we didn't think the asking would actually be reasonable). I thought this place would have been a sale at a price more like 2.5mill. Old houses have lots of charm. Now we just have to hope for good buyers for our old place (we are not planning to list it though until after we move). Going to be a busy February.
