We received a counter offer around lunchtime. They came down by a fair amount, but both our realtor and the listing agent agreed that it should have been lower. We had originally planned to let them sweat a week before countering back but, with the 4 day wait between counters because we apparently have to get back in line, decided today that the tactic would be wasted on them. Instead, we raised our offer by the expected amount of closing costs… and then asked them to pay closing. The listing agent doesn’t think they’ll accept that either, but she’s so desperate to get the house sold that she’s essentially switched camps. She’ll be pushing them for us. Gotta love it!

I think that I might have accidentally switched bodies with our realtor last week. She called on Friday to say that we’d probably hear something on Monday. On Monday she called to say that the re-lo counselor assigned to the house was on vacation that day and that we’d probably get a response on Tuesday.

We didn’t hear anything today either. Despite the fact that it was the first question out of the mouths of nearly everyone I spoke to today just so that I could be assured of not forgetting that we were still waiting for news, it just didn’t bother me. It is so incredibly reassuring to know that we don’t have any competition for this property. We’re still on a lease until the end of June, so it’s not like we’re in a big rush to move either. In fact, the longer this process takes, the better it works out for us – our stock keeps creeping up, we get one more round of paychecks in the bank, we pay a little bit less in property taxes our first year. The one thing I am a little bothered about is the fact that interest rates started going up this week, but it’s nothing to panic over. Yet.

Our realtor, on the other hand, is really anxious. She called them again today for an update. She made a point of telling them that she was calling for herself rather than on our behalf but there was no news.

Maybe tomorrow. Hee.

So apparantly our first offer never even made it to the relocation company. The listing agent, empowered by the re-lo company, was the one who presented the first counter, which makes so much more sense now looking back on it. Our second offer is the first one that the re-lo company will actually see, and it will still take them 3-4 days to review it and get back to us. However, our realtor thinks we may hear from them Monday. If we do, great, but if they don’t take the offer or come back with a really good counter, it’ll be our turn to let them sweat a bit. I’m still convinced that they want to sell this house a whole lot more than we want to buy it. As long as we don’t lose sight of that, it puts us in a really good position.