BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD

Didn't get our house, because the "Seller" as she's called, wasn't interested in negotiating price. At all. This is something I (as a total neophyte) understood was basic procedure.

Okay, well, my (admittedly shaky) understanding of the process is, you price your house a little (or a lot) above what you hope to get, and then you negotiate with a buyer who makes an offer.

The only basis for comparison I have is yard sales. If I want to sell, say, my elderly sofa - It's in good shape, a little worn where the boyo of (some previous) moment insisted on sitting exclusively, but still, it's quite nice. Also the cats have had some influence on one of the arms. And sometime past, I did pay $1000 for said sofa, but time has come and gone. I believe this sofa is STILL worth at least $500, but I know we're talking yard sale (not consignment shop, or even Good Will, here) so I price it at $150, knowing full well that while it is "worth" more in some market, but not the one I'm dealing in - I am willing to take $100 for it, if whoever it is will hand me the cash and take it away immediately.

I go into this in some detail to describe what my basis for understanding this is.

Dim, at best.

The house, is not so much like this. "My house is totally worth the asking price," the Seller asserted in the exchange, via realtors and whoever-

WTF?

Darling Harry was Very Very Bummed. (Fixed signs get attached to things)

When it came right down to it, I thought, "Okay, this is a perfectly lovely house. It looks wonderful and has many things we want (hardwood floors, a garage, a nice kitchen) - not to mention several things it hasn't occurred to us to want: A working fireplace. A shed to store things. Gorgeous light fixtures and tasteful painting palettes... So- Boyo and I being both fixed sun signs.. . we had BONDED with this house. It took some REALLY hard remembering to realize that there WASN'T: a fourth BR, a REAL tub to bath in - AND that it was $20,000 more than our most hopeful estimate, previously.

So we passed.

There are lots of houses out there. We're getting over it