Updates about the house

The real estate broker Chris Kim kept calling me today. He first called at 13:50 to tell me about an offer for $1.053 and was pressuring me to take it. He said that an appraiser would go to the house tomorrow (meaning Wednesday 7/9) to appraise it since the couple from Princeton (who made the bid) hadn't seen the house yet, but he wanted to close the deal within three weeks (when he said that these things normally take two months). He told me that he had just spoken with RK on the phone and was now contacting me since he couldn't reach Clara. (He literally called me while I was on the phone with her and she was frantically telling me how her cell phone battery was running out.) I told him that I needed to speak with my sister. Chris gave me his cell phone number, told me to call ANYTIME, and asked to please call him back right away.

My lawyer CYJ called me at 15:35 today. He had just gotten off the phone with Chris. I told him that Clara and I would call him back after we discussed all that.

I notice that there was a missed call on my phone while I away from my desk. Chris had called at 15:19 while I was out, so I listened to his message. He'd asked on the voicemail whether I'd spoken with my sister yet and that he'd spoken with CYJ. I called him back and he said that the buyer wants to wrap this up by next Friday ("in two weeks"). I asked him, didn't he say THREE weeks when I spoke to him earlier? He said no (but he definitely did). He gave me a bunch of "facts" like how it's a bad real estate market, that we should just take this offer, that we're wasting time and money by not taking the offer, etc. I said that my sister and I think that $1.053 is too low.

Chris called again at 16:15. I spoke with him for ten minutes on the phone. Basically it was a lot of back-and-forth, me saying that we weren't interested in such a low offer, him saying that we should definitely take it. At one point, he said that nobody wants to pay so much money for the house, which is why they lowered the asking price twice.

NOTE: WE WERE NEVER MADE AWARE OF THESE PRICE DECREASES.

I asked him to clarify about these price decreases, and he said that the asking price went down from $1.29 to $1.19 and $1.1 (the current price) two-and-a-half months ago and two months ago, respectively. I told him that I was hearing this information for the first time and that he could not possibly expect that I make a decision about this during the same phone call when I found out that the asking price went down twice (two months ago!). He kept asking what my counter-offer was, and I said that since the listing price has changed, I needed to speak to my sister. He told me about his successful background in real estate, but I explained that this was my parents' house that they had built, and we were not going to go for a crappy offer.

We ended the conversation with me saying that I'd consult some people first and then get back to him. He was very pushy.

He later called me again sometime while I was eating dinner (probably around 19:00). He left a message saying that the buyers were not increasing their bid but that he and their agent would take a lesser commission so that we would have $10,000 more. He asked that we call him back. (I'd listened to this message later.) He also called me again at 19:54 but did not leave a message.

After speaking with some relatives and my sister, I left him a voicemail at 22:30 to tell him that we'd speak again tomorrow. (I just wanted to touch base before the end of the day.) He has not called me back yet (but I'm guessing we'll talk tomorrow).