I paid the $800 betterment fee to the town and signed up for the coming sewer service. Huge concrete forms were dropped off along the street, including some placed in our front yard.
Hoping the sewer connection could be done before closing on the sale of the house, I contacted one of the contractors authorized to do the work. He came to the house, saw what he would need to do, and quoted a more than reasonable price of $2400. As I recall, the deposit was only $600.
While I was doing that, my wife looked for a real estate agent. The first one she talked to wanted to list the house for what seemed to me a giveaway asking price. Another realtor, who we hired, told us the other agent’s sister lived in the house behind ours. Ah. The lady was trying to arrange a shady deal for herself. I should have reported her, but I didn’t. There was too much going on, in addition to my job, to bother with that.
The concrete forms were still there when the agent held a Sunday open house. She saw them as a selling point. Overnight, a powerful storm had dumped a significant amount of rain on the town. When the agent arrived, I told her I had to mop up some water that had appeared under the oil tank in the basement. She was relieved, because the other houses being shown that day in our price range all had flooded basements.
During the open house we were killing time at a museum, when the agent called my wife’s (analog) cellphone. There were two offers; one was for the asking price, the other was for $500 above asking price.
When we met with the agent later, I asked her what she was able to learn about the people who had made the two competing offers. She handed us a nicely written letter from the couple who were offering the extra $500. They were young professionals who were hoping to start a family. The offer for asking price was from a couple with two small children. He was a truck driver with a tile contracting business on the side. I accepted their offer.
The agent said she’d never had a client turn down an offer for more money, even a small amount like $500. The thing to do was ask if they would match it. I explained to her that I simply felt the couple with children would be a better fit for the neighborhood. Also, I liked the idea of the kids playing in the backyard. I’d put a lot of work and money into making the backyard nice for us. That was another reason why I didn’t want a new leaching field that would require removal of the above-ground pool and leave a huge mound with a vent stack.
So, everything was in motion. My mother made it through her medical crisis, I was going to buy a house (while not yet knowing about the bank’s underwriting screw-up), and there was a contract to purchase for my house. It was a great week when the street was dug up and all of the concrete forms were buried underground. It then became a question of how much of a delay there would be before the town gave the okay for the sewer hookup.