Bingo!

I did promise that I would fill in the gaps regarding the most expeditious and auspicious purchase of our new home on the Saanich peninsular…

Well – ‘Yer tis’ – as they purportedly exclaim down ‘Zummerzet’ way (how’s that for an entirely gratuitous, irrelevant and quasi-offensive reference?).

I wrote in this post concerning our first abortive attempt to purchase a house on the island from vendors who had clearly forgotten the essential characteristic required of their role in the transaction – namely the desire actually to sell the property that they had brought to market!

When it became clear that the deal was not after all going ahead – and mindful of the fact that the paucity of new properties being offered had created a sellers’ market in which houses were moving rapidly and, occasional, selling above the asking price – the Kickass Canada Girl and I decided to revisit our criteria for choosing a new home.

This we did in part by driving around each of the areas on which we had focussed our attention, looking critically at our reasons for having chosen them and re-evaluating their potential when it came to fulfilling our dream. As often seems to be the way with us this actually had the effect of narrowing our range of possibilities, leaving us ultimately with a mere two adjacent streets within our number one area on which we were prepared to settle.

It looked as though we had made things yet more difficulty when the Girl mused that our ideal might be a house owned by an old couple that now needed fixing up.

What were the odds?

At about the time that we had finally decided to let the first house go we were out on a Thursday afternoon in downtown Victoria. The Girl has been signed up for several years to email alerts from our realtor when new properties come on to the market and – wouldn’t you know it? – a notification popped up.

A new house had come on the market – on one of our two chosen streets! We called our realtor. She was busy but checked with the vendors realtor, who was actually at the property. We could view immediately. We drove there directly, arriving no more than 45 minutes after the ‘for sale’ sign went out.

We liked what we saw. The right street – loads of space – beautiful and quiet garden – wonderful views – plenty of space for the Girl and an large outbuilding that I could turn into a studio. Furthermore, the property had been owned by an old couple. The husband had died and the wife was going back to live near family in Vancouver. The house had been looked after, but the decor and installations – kitchens, bathrooms etc – dated from the 70s and would need to be replaced.

We paid another visit the very next morning and determined to make an offer. Fearing that the vendor’s realtor might attempt to engineer another multiple offer situation we made a full price offer, and after an anxious wait we heard that it had been accepted.

Being cash buyers the only conditions attached related to the home inspection. We had already lined up an inspector for our abortive first purchase effort and he was simply switched – the following Wednesday – to the new house. He had only minor issues to report and the payment of the requisite deposit made the house ours – just in time for us to leave on our trip to the interior.

Wow!