Aggressive Negotiations

On Saturday I met up with my realtor and looked at a few places in Catalina. The first was a nice little house on 0.5 acres. It wasn't anything special, but it was well maintained and had a great view of the Catalina Mountains from the backyard. We looked at a few loser mobiles (puke), and finally a small house on 1 acre. It had tremendous views. Four ranges could be seen from the deck - the Catalina, Tortolita, Tucson, and Sierrita Mountains. You could literally sit on that deck all day and watch the sun rise and then set. The view caught my interest right away. The house itself was nice – open floor plan, sky-lights in the kitchen, two bedrooms and two bathrooms, etc. It was a bit bigger than the first house and the property was lush with native vegetation and avifauna - quail running through the yard and thrashers and wrens calling from their cholla and palo verde perches.

I pondered a potential offer Saturday night and today, I met with my realtor to write up an offer. Let me set this up for you a bit. A series of important details indicated to me that I could go in with a very aggressive offer. First of all, the house has been on the market for almost 4 months. Secondly, the listing stated that the owner was very motivated and that all offers were welcome. And then there was the little slip their realtor made in mentioning that they'd had very few showings.

So much to the chagrin of my realtor (I could actually hear him sigh over the phone), I decided to offer $40k below the asking price. Gutsy eh? Well, you have to realize that I am in absolutely no hurry to get myself into a mortgage on an overvalued piece of property - especially in this market. Yeah, the view was spectacular, but there are other properties in the same area that would suit me just as well. So no, I didn't have-to-have this particular house. Also, I have a very ideal living situation right now that does not force me to make a hasty decision. I feel that I have the upper hand in this one. I don't expect them to take my offer outright, but I do expect them to come down a bit. I have no idea what type of response I'll get, but I feel like I really have nothing to lose. We'll see what happens…

Looking east towards the Catalina Moutnains: