'Nough said! Can't believe it and we are kind of freaking out but are super excited!
Apparently it was pretty close but the sellers really liked Per and I from when we met them so they went with our offer.
Anybody good at removing pink tile??
(Lou...the basement will be open for you and stew to move in when you get here...)
Here's a link to the MLS listing with photos.
After putting in a solid full-price offer for a house that's been on the market for less than 12 hours, the selling agent said that he would review offers today at 2:30. We found out by late morning that we were competing with 2 other offers though, so we sweetened the pot as much as we were comfortable (waived the inspection and added an escalator). However, at 6pm tonight we found out that while we were the highest of the 3 offers they had in writing by the 2:30 deadline, another guy gave them a verbal offer at 5pm (2 1/2 hours after the deadline) for $5,000 more than our highest price (he of course knew our highest price and his agent was able to stall for 3+ hours so his wife could see the house). So, the selling agent countered us by asking for our highest price (the ceiling of our escalator) and 10 days to move out after the closing date (while we're paying for the house) or they would go with the verbal offer. What the hell...?
So it looks like their agent is toying around with us a bit by using this verbal offer that may or may not come back in writing. All this taking place while we had dinner plans with our friends and their parents to discuss their upcoming wedding that I, Reverend Johnson, am officiating. What a pain.
In the end, Paula and I rolled the dice and countered the sellers back. We've essentially gave in with the exception that we asked for some closing costs back (to cover the time that they are still living in the house after closing while we're paying on the mortgage) so we have some cash to perhaps update the 1954 interior.
What's really bothered us about this whole thing is two things:
So we scrambled last night to put together an offer on a house that came on the market mid-afternoon yesterday. Sure, we didn't waste any time, but that's what you do after you briefly look at a house and dazed by the cuteness that is Margaret and Harold. They're the couple that's lived in the house since it was built in 1954 and are selling so they could move to a retirement community. They're super cute...especially the 100+ bird houses that she's collected and put up every spring in her back yard. Love her!
However, it's less than 24 hours from when we saw the house and the selling realtor has 3 offers! I thought we, the buyers, we in the driving seat in this silly market?...What's going on? Aaargh. So, Paula and I scrambled again to sweeten the offer while still trying to grapple with the balancing act of price versus what we remember of our 1/2 hour visit. I guess it'll all work out in the end just like God has planned, but that's sometimes hard for us and our cramped border collie to accept.
We'll keep y'all posted.
Cheers
Paula and I just made an offer on a house and we're freakin' out! We've been through this two years ago at the pinnacle of the market and fortunately none of the offers we made were accepted. However, we've both been told over and over again that this is a buyers market but that houses that are move-in-ready and well priced still go pretty quick. So, the house came on the market this afternoon and before they could even post photos we had visited in and were writing an offer.
What do you think?...did we come off a little desperate?...whatever, who asked you anyways...
So, we'll see what happens tomorrow and whether they accept our offer we proceed into large quantities of debt. Wish us luck.
Hello all! Thanks for keeping up with our blog during our European Adventure. For your viewing pleasure, we have posted the best of our 1,000+ photos on our Picasa web album. Links to those photos are below. You can double click on the slide shows to be taken to our Picasa site.
Boston, Mass: Visited Eirik and Heidi and our new nephew Skye! Long-time friends, Drew and Kelli, live about a mile away from them and let us stay with them.
Greece: Spent about a day in Athens doing the ruins thing and got rained on a lot. Caught a ferry to the island of Mykonos for a few days then on to the volcanic island of Santorini for a few more. Lastly, we spent about 9 days traveling through Crete.
Italy: Flew from Athens to Rome and walked endlessly from historic site to historic site. Amazing. Started at the Vatican and then made our way southeast to the Forums by way of the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps and numerous beautiful piazzas. Then, we caught a train to Florence for a few days, caught a bus to Siena for another couple days, and took part in two wine tours to the Chianti region and Burnello region. Then it was on to Cinque Terre, which are 5 gorgeous towns along the Mediterranean where they've established vineyards, olive groves, and lemon groves on terraces built into steep slopes. Cinque Terre is now a national park and each town is connected by a trail and rail. Gorgeous!
UK: We flew from Milan to Edinburgh and stayed with our good friend Lou, her husband Stew, and Stew's parents Moira (aka Moisy) and Ian (aka the Big Easy). Lou showed us around Edinburgh for a couple days and drove us down to Liverpool for the Liverpool v Newcastle football match. From Liverpool, Paula and I drove through Wales (beautiful) and then onto the Cotswolds region of England (also beautiful). We ended our UK jaunt with a few days in London.
We're back from our trip now and are finding ourselves being absorbed back into the routines we had left behind. Work and responsibilities will do that, I guess. We still don't have our photos loaded to a website for your viewing pleasure, but that will probably happen over the coming weekend. Fortunately, my computer crashed the day after we returned and I've been enjoying recreating my virtual life over the past 4 months. I guess I'm pretty lucky that we had backed up most of our stuff recently though.
On another note, I thought I'd pass this note of clarification forwarded to me by our friend Lou who was the lucky entertainer and tour guide while we were in Scotland visiting her. You may remember from the Rambler's Side Note in our last post that she had mentioned that ramblers (e.g., people who like to walk everywhere...especially upon really old rambling tracks) could essentially walk wherever they wanted and even pitch their tent where ever they wanted. As it turns out, this isn't completely true and we now have more detail thanks to Lou's legal background research. This could only mean 1 thing if she has time to do this legal research, swine flu hasn't reached epidemic status in Scotland yet and the public health department isn't too busy. However, without further ado, here's the details that Lou sent over on rambling:
Fact 1. It's legislated! Walkways are regulated by the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000.
Fact 2. The public have traditionally been allowed unhindered access to open countryside. The Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 formalized and extended this right, by creating a general presumption of access to all land. Take that stinkin' farmers! Please note, don't tell my dad I just said that. I am, after all, a farmer's daughter.
Fact 3. I was right! There is a Ramblers Association in the UK, but they prefer to just be called The Ramblers....friendly folk, I'm sure!
Fact 4. There have been land owner vs rambler court cases of late, I'm guessing the ramblers walked to the court room (baboom, ching!) Ann Gloag won a court case in 2007 that meant ramblers couldn't camp on her castle grounds - so I guess this means JK (the Harry Potter author) is safe from Paula pitching a tent too!
So, there you have it. Sounds like rambling is legal in the countryside and not necessarily anywhere within the City of Edinburgh. Also, doesn't sound like we can pitch our tent on J.K. Rowling's backyard without having Dobby the House Elf coming out and kicking our ass.
It's been awhile since we've updated our blog...sorry. What can I say but they don't have a lot of internet cafes in the super-cute villages and hamlets where we've stayed in Wales and the Cotswolds over the last few days. However, we're in London now which means that we successfully survived driving on the opposite side of the road from the opposite side of the car as they do throughout the UK. We also successfully made it without major navigational issues thanks the trusty navigator Paula. The only quasi-sad thing is that we're nearing the end of this 5-week adventure. I say quasi-sad because it's sad that I will have to return to work (no offense Katie and Gerard if you read this...), but exciting since we'll be able to see our family, friends, and pets (Paula's especially excited about seeing her fat cat Gordon).
Anyway, I'm rambling on now (interesting side note about rambling at the bottom of the post)...on to the update.
As I said, we're in London right now and a block away from Trafalgar Square at the moment. We've just spent about 3 hours in the Tower of London which is more of a compound than a tower, so its sorta poorly named in my opinion. The Tower of London is home to many really fascinating historical events including the beheading of 6 pretty royal and important people among other things. It's also home to the Crown Jewels, which are pretty impressive. Puff Daddy has nothing on the Queen and her bling bling (actually, I don't think anyone on the planet has more bling or bigger bling than the Queen since she has the largest cut diamond). Perhaps she can afford the phatty jewels since they charged us £17 per person (that's nearly $25 per person for a whopping total of $50 for Paula and I).
We've also checked off some pretty cool tourist stops already including Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Westminster Bridge, the London Eye, the Globe Theater, and Tower Bridge. Tomorrow we'll head to Buckingham Palace for the changing of the guard, perhaps to #10 Downing Street, British Museum (I know, I know...I said no more museums...we'll make this one an exception because its free), Hyde Park, and other fun stuff. We may even catch a showing of the Wicked musical (I may let Paula do something she wants to since there's no football on the tele tomorrow). Who knows, we may get a bit crazy in London on our last night! If we're lucky, my night will end with the world spinning again and Paula helping me to bed...(just kidding...)
Earlier in the day, we arrived from Burton-on-the-Water and dropped off our rental car. Burton is a beautiful little village in the Cotswolds region of England (west of London and east of Wales). We've been told that the Cotswolds are home to some of the most beautiful towns and rolling hills in all of England and I wouldn't be surprised by that. We walked through beautiful pastures and fields throughout the rolling hills and made our way to Lower Slaughter, another small village that's really just gorgeous residences and hotels. Before that, we made the obligatory but pleasant trip up to the lower Midlands to Stratford-upon-Avon where we visited Shakespeare's birth place and his tomb. Sort of a tourist meca and a literary pilgrimage now, but it was pretty cool and also very beautiful.
The day before, we had drove from Wales where we had spent the night, made our way along the beautiful welsh coast and arrived at the village of Broadway in the Cotswolds. Another beautiful village where we didn't have much time to spend since most of our day was in our car driving through the countryside. We only had enough time to watch my gunners fall to Manchester United and ran into some annoying local Man U fans in the pub. Paula did a marvelous job of controlling me though so I didn't pop my top and say something regrettable.
The day before that we spent driving through Wales. Who knew Wales was so beautiful! For such a small country, they've got loads of beautiful coast, castles, rolling hills dotted with white sheep, and very small and quaint villages. We made our way out to the Conwy Castle in the north of Wales and then on to White Sands beach in the south for part of our time in Wales. Unfortunately, we could only drive through the massively beautiful Snowdonia Park but it was enough for us to get a feel for it and hope to come back to spend more time there.
I almost forgot...the Liverpool v Newcastle game was AMAZING! We sat with the Newcastle fans since I could only get tickets to the game as an official Newcastle supporter. However, the outcome was just as I expected...Newcastle got beat handidly 3-0 (sorry Joel, they were dreadful). Liverpool could have beaten them even worse since they hit the woodwork 3 times and scarcely missed the goal a couple more times. Paula points out that Newcastle did play pretty well at times, but irregardless it was a blow out. The Newcastle fans were histarical though and out-sang the Liverpool fans in my opinion. Perhaps the Liverpool fans had gone to bed, but the Newcastle supporters were singing things such as..."you stole my stereo," "you only sing when you're stealing," and "you're just a town full of smack heads" (apparently there's an image that people from Liverpool are nothing but thiefs and heroin addicts). It was also the place to be seen as well...Daniel Craig (the actor that plays James Bond) was at the match... Lunch was no picnic though...Paula and Lou had fish and chips and I tried the chips and gravy barm (still not really sure what it is). So, I had a great time and I think Paula even enjoyed herself.
This will probably be our last post until we get back home and have a chance to upload our photos.
On behalf of our guest blogger (Paula) and I, the McJohnson's would very much like to thank you for following us on our trip and contributing by way of your clever comments and poll requests. Thanks so much and stay tuned to the McJohnson Times...there will hopefully be more exciting news relatively soon as its house hunting time when we get home!
(Rambling side note: On our drive from Scotland to Liverpool, Lou (our Aussie friend living in Edinburgh) explained to us that rambling (e.g., going on long walks through the countryside) is a big deal in Scotland. Apparently, there's really old rambling trails all over Scotland that are protected under law and anyone can walk on them. The funny thing is that these trails are largely on private land, so anyone can go walk on these trails and essentially tresspass with legal authority. What's even stranger (from an American perspective) is that you can walk on anyone's property and even pitch a tent to camp on their property with no big deal. There's got to be limits as to where you can do this, how long, and how close to other residences, but we don't know them. So, we were wondering whether we could pitch our tent on J.K. Rowling's yard and get away with it. For those that don't know, J.K. Rowling is the author of the Harry Potter books that Paula and I read over and over again and who also takes up residency in Edinburgh (we Google Map'd her house). We're not sure whether these rambling trails and their camping rules apply throughout the UK, but we did use public walking trails in the Cotswolds which took us on private property. Anyway, thought that was interesting.
Paula here with a bit of an update...we've been enjoying ourselves (and refusing to pay €4.50 and hour for internet) so we haven't had much time to write. Now though, we have free internet (and free washing) since we're in Scotland visiting my friend lou and her hubbie stu. Goodtimes.
So here's an update from Siena on...you may want to sit down, get some din din and get comfortable because this could be a long one. Feel free to pat yourself on the back if you make to the end...it may be like putting in 3 hours at the Vatican museum (i.e. quite an accomplishment).
Siena was lovely. A smaller town with a lot of character and as Per mentioned, close proximity to wineries. We did a couple of wine tours, one in Chianti and one in the Brunello region which is known to have the best wine in the world currently...it's the soil apparently. The second tour did not bring about a whirling and twirling world for Per; however, it did bring about a few more bottles of wine for us pack (very carefully) in our bags. I'm praying I don't smell wine eminating from my back pack upon our arrival back in the states. Though it'd be an excellent reason to get new clothes and would likely smell much nicer than my dirty clothes so... We visited a couple of precious hilltowns in the region, Montalcino and San Gimigmano, which were fantastic...I am realizing more and more that I am a small town girl. Not sure if that means I should move back to Vashon someday but the cities do overwhelm me a touch.
From Siena we travelled on to Cinque Terre which was easily my favorite stop in Italy. It was a bit of a struggle to get there as we had to take a bus and three trains and as our bank noticed some "unusual activity" on our account so we couldn't get any money...minor problem. Apparently they aren't reading our blog and didn't know we were in Europe. Nevertheless, we stayed in Montorosso al Mare, the western most town of the 5 towns on what is considered the Italian riviera. It's gorgeous! Five small pastel towns built into the rocks on the coast line connected by trains and a 13km walking trail. As we arrived on Wednesday (Champion's league semifinal match day) we headed for lunch and Per promptly found a cute Panini pub that would be playing the game that night...Thank the Lord!! our plans for the evening were set, now what to do for the rest of the day. We wandered, laid on the beach listening to Harry Potter (fyi I'm making sure to put the HP in every post...love it! and am now searching Edinburgh for JK Rowling and secretly hoping to visit King's Cross station in London!! Best Ever!) and then headed to Vernazza (next town over) for a bit of Gelato and a Gordon sighting, which completed my vacation (for those that know me well, I LOVE my fat cat Gordon).
Next day we did the 13km trail. Up and down steep steps and trails along the coastline and through farm land of olives, lemons and grapes built on the steep hills. You'd have to be in quite good shape to farm that land...whoa! We stopped in each town for a little exploration, drinks, lunch whatever...quite a great way to spend the day which ended, again, laying on the beach massaging our sore muscles.
Headed to Edinburgh via Milan the next day and today have enjoyed a bit of a wander around the city with Lou...I've also enjoyed chatting persistently with Lou (not sure Per knows quite what to do with himself though I'm sure he's thinking that it proves his point that I am my mother's daughter...she can talk like no other! and now he's watching Real Madrid v Barcelona on the tele so he can't hear us yammer on anyway) Today, we headed to the castle, grabbed some fish and chips (they serve it here with peas also), walked up to the top of Arthur's Seat which is a large hill, quite a trek really, in the middle of the city that affords gorgeous panoramic views. Also enjoyed a little beverage in the pub with all the oddly dressed (kilts, floral skirts on men, jerseys, peter pan outfits...you name it) rugby fans. Apparently there's some big tourney on this weekend and all the crazies are out.
Our plan for the evening is to have a fried cheeseburger...yep, you read that right...apparently its the most delicious thing on earth prepared by the Jesus of frying. Lou tells us it has made some rather health conscious folks question why they ever deprived themselves of such a wonder. It's 2 patties of meat and 2 slices of cheese deep fried in batter and comes in a paper bag...that's the simple secret to glory.
Then we head to Liverpool tomorrow. We have greatly enjoyed our time in Edinburgh. It has been so wonderful to see Lou. She is just one of those fantastic people that I truly value in my life and I was quite devastated when I couldn't go to her wedding so it has been so fun to see her and meet her great hubbie.
Today was a long day, leaving Cinque Terre around 6:55am - arriving in Milan by train at 10:00 am; bus to the Milano airport at 11:30 am - arriving at 12:00 pm; flight from Milan to London at 5pm - arriving in London at 6pm (1 hour time change); and finally catching a flight at 6:25pm to Edinburgh - arriving around 7:30pm. However, now we're here with Lou and Stu (Stewart and Louise Laing) and Stu's folks Ian and Moira (aka. Big Easy and Moisey) in their beautiful home nestled in the town of South Queensferry just outside of Edinburgh. Apparently, this is the southern town where the queen would catch the ferry to the north; thus, its name...
Lou is a friend of Paula's from Melbourne, Australia (...you pronounce Melbourne with a silent 'r' by the way) who made it over to our wedding and is perhaps one of the funnest people we know. She met Stu traveling through South America after leaving our wedding, so we take some credit in arranging their chance meeting...
Apart from basking in our clean clothes that have just come out of the wash, tomorrow we're going to be guided through Edinburgh as Lou has agreed to give us a 24 hour tour. Then on Sunday, the 3 of us will road trip down to Liverpool for the Liverpool v Newcastle match. We're having a great time getting to know Lou's husband Stu, and his parents Big Easy and Moisy are fantastically gracious hosts. More details will be shared once we have some clue as to what we're going to do...
Our time in Italy was a blast and we thank all that provided such great recommendations that helped us along our trip. It's a bit too late in the night to properly bestow our thanks upon Italy for being such great hosts and showing us a great time, so that will be tomorrow with pictures. For now, a hearty thank you will have to do.
Hope you're all well and happy May Day back in the States.
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