CAMINO PORTUGUESE – Reflections Part 2 (2018)

The title of this post should probably read:

The amazing story of selling the (same) house twice in one month!

If you’ve missed our previous post (Reflections Part 1), you should maybe read that first, before continue reading the 2nd edition of our reflections …

We’ve told you there about a couple of bold decisions we’ve made since we’ve returned from our Portuguese Camino in May 2018 … including selling our house in Cape Town, South Africa.

As per our previous post, I’ve resigned in May 2018 after 11 years of customer service to patients and their families and Berto has set his aim on resigning by the end of November … which brought us to the following question: When do we put our house on the market to sell, but still be able to stay there until the end of November?

At the beginning of June, I’ve contacted an agent to discuss the selling of our house. He paid a visit to our house and immediately set a price he thought was suitable for our house … although it was a couple of hundred thousand rand more than what we’ve expected, we’ve agreed (who wouldn’t).

With the “for sale” notice on the front gate of our house, I’ve started to pack and wait for the potential buyers to flock into our house … but nothing happened 😯.

Nobody came to visit our house, the agent had a couple of open days and even a power hour during the week, but the handful of people that did visit our house, was not interested!

We’ve asked the agent what was wrong … should we maybe paint the house, re-do the garden (we were in the middle of a drought in Cape Town) or do proper staging … his answer was that we were in the middle of Winter and that it is always more difficult to sell a house during this time … but, we were not convinced.

One evening me and Berto had a discussion and we were wondering whether the reason for our house not selling, might be because it is over-priced.

Our house was now for almost 2 months in the market and there were no results.

This is when doubt starts to kick in: We’ve asked ourselves the question whether this is a sign that we should maybe not sell the house … we’ve prayed about this and then once again realised why we were doing this … to get out of the rat race and find balance in our lives!

After 3 months since we’ve first put our house on the market, the contract with our agent expired and we’ve decided not to renew this … it was time for some serious reconsidering!

With renewed energy, we’ve started from scratch again in September – we just knew we had to make this work!

Which lead to 3 things:

• We’ve called in the help of a builder/painter and in a week our house got a new layer of paint and a bit of renovation was done.
• We’ve bought a couple of items to “stage” our home … we’ve realised that this is not OUR cozy home anymore, but a show house that someone else would like to buy.
• Most importantly, we’ve appointed a new agent to help us … and what an angel Annette proved to be! She was well informed of the house market in our area and lowered our asking price to a more reasonable one.

And she went all out!! She marketed our house on so many platforms and literally brought potential buyers every day to visit our home.

And then, within a week after our house was back on the market, we’ve got our buyer … willing to pay the asking price!

Sold! What a great day!

We were over the moon! Things looked bright again and we were celebrating!

But then …

The next week, literally as we were driving to the lawyers to sign the offer of purchase, we’ve got a phone call that the sale of our house was cancelled 😞. The potential buyer was retrenched at his work and his bank cancelled his loan to purchase our house … we were devastated to say the least!

It is almost impossible to put our feelings into words after this happened … because you know what, once again, we’ve doubted whether we were doing the right thing!

But Annette, our agent, once again jumped into action and worked until late that night to send adverts out to re-advertise our house.

And, as hard as it is to believe … one week later, we’ve sold our house (again)!!

To make it even more amazing – before the sale of our house could be finalised, the following had to happen:

• The buyers of our house, first had to find buyers for their house (and they did!) …
• And the people that bought their house, first had to sell their house (and they did!)

And it all happened in one week!

We’ve also got the green light that we could stay in our house until the end of November, which was exactly what we’ve hoped for from the moment we’ve put our house on the market back in June.

Sold (again!) And this time, it was for real!

There was absolutely no doubt now that we were doing the right thing. We’ve thanked our Lord for His blessings. Annette, our agent, was amazing and we will never forget her determination to assist us to the very end!

You see friends, it is true that things don’t always work out the way we’ve planned … but for a very good reason … the timing is not right!

It’s always amazing when you look back at what happened in your life and then realised (of course much later), it all worked out the way it was supposed to 😌.

So, there you have the amazing story of how we’ve sold our house … a big part of what had to happen in order for us to continue with our new adventure.

I know I’ve promised to tell you about the unexpected direction our lives had taken and our move to our beach house in Langebaan … but that will have to wait for our next post!

Speak to you soon in Part 3 of this (very long) reflections on our Portuguese Camino … 😉