Gorik’s Weblog

Now that I’m back home in my tiny appartment in this crappy town called Tienen I was looking around to maybe buying a house, closer to home (haha), I mean closer to the town where I grew up and a lot of my friends still live.

So I started looking online at immo sites until I found something that I could affort without spending all my monthly pay on paying of a loan. Trying to make an appointment to visit the house I call the real estate agent who apparently was located in Borgworm (which afterwards I realised is the Dutch name for Waremme, a town in the french part of Belgium). When I call the number I get a french speaking women on the phone who confirms that she doesn’t speak dutch (like most of the walloons) so I try my best french (which is still pretty bad) and she tells me I have to come to her office, which I found a bit strange but I assume we would drive from there to the house.

When the day of the appointment came I drove about 30 minutes all the way to the real estate agent in Waremme excited to finally see the house. So the lady asks me all kinds of questions about my income etc. (still all in French) and then says ‘Ok, now we have to schedule an appointment to visit the house’. A bit pissed off because I just wasted a few hours on a day off just to help this lady fill up her database I make an appointment for wednesday evening 19:00 (because 20:00 was too late!).

Next day the lady calls me to tell me the date didn’t work out for the owner so she proposed scheduling a new appointment the wednesday after. So I was forced to wait another week before I could see the house.

So last wednesday I finally saw the house, luckily the owner was bilingual so I could understand all the details about the house. May I remind you that the house is located in Flanders in a town where 99.9 % of the people speaks Dutch.

The house was actually pretty nice, but with still a lot of work to do and the asking price was somewhat above the market value (since the market is declining) and also it was already for sale for a long time (I heard from my friends who live nearby). Still, I was/am interested so the next day I picked up the phone to make an offer, but at the real estate agent nobody picked up, although the voicemail nicely stated all the official opening hours and guess what, I was calling in these hours. I also noticed a website mentioned on the booklet I received the day before, so I surfed to the site to see if I hadn’t misunderstood the hours (I’m terrible with numbers in French) but there were no opening hours mentioned on the website. However, the site did state in big letters ‘We speak Dutch and English’. Yeah right!

Later that day I was able to reach someone at the office but she said the person responsible was not in and that she would call me back the next morning. Today, after waiting all morning I called back myself and finally got the lady on the phone. I state that I want to make an offer on the house and mention the amount which was a little bit lower than the asking price but still a fair price.

The answer from the real estate agent was: ‘But the owner wants this amount ! You should make an offer that is above that amount.’ I try to explain her about house value and the reality of the market and she finally stops nagging about my offer and then tells me I have to come over to sign a paper for this offer at her office. I try to debate the absurdity of signing for an offer without even getting feedback from the owner first, but she insists so we finally agree that I will come over on monday. Luckily I planned to be home a few mondays in a row to recover some holiday from last year.

But all this makes me wonder how long this lady has been in the real estate business. Fist of all, if it is not an open sale (or whatever they call this in English), your asking price should always be higher than what you expect to get in the end. Ever heard of some who enters a store, asks the price for a tv and then gives a bit more because it’s a nice tv?

Secondly, if I make an offer, it is the start of a negotiation. Typically when someone asks 20 apples and you only want to pay 15 apples, you will bid 10 apples to agree in 15. Or with a house you could agree to raise the offer if the owner fixes some things before moving out. But when you start asking for meetings and signatures for every stage in the negotiation process, people tend to get bored of all the hassle and start looking for something else without raising the initial bid.

So I will go to sign my offer but have also started looking at other house because although I like this one and probably would have increased my first bid, I don’t like all this hassle at all.