They call me RICH-BLOR, Prince of Persuasion

Ok, noone really calls me that, but you get the idea!

Our house has been up on the market now for about a month and a half, and putting it mildly we are pretty disappointed with the lack of interest we have received. So far two people have requested a contract, one vanished never to return and the other has been very unwilling to make an offer. But at least she remains interested I suppose!

First off she comes in demands an inspection on a thursday afternoon, dragging one of us out of work to look after the dog. She got there early, asked waaaay too many questions and generally didn't have much that was good to say about the place. Bizarrely she then came back on Saturday last week (why did she insist on the zero-notice inspection?) and requested a copy of the contract plus permission from our body corporate to bring in two cats. Now that seems extremely positive right? But rather than get the ball rolling, she insists on waiting on a response from the body corporate before doing anything further.

As a bit of back story, our block has a long standing division between pet owners (5 out of 11) and pet haters (currently non that I'm aware of, the main troublemaker moved thank christ). And yet somehow, despite this serious skew in favour of pet owners they managed to pass a change in by law which prevents any further pets being brought in. Naturally, the very next person to move in brought a dog with them, pleaded ignorance and the 'rules violation' was overlooked (which plays a large part in our story!). By law, people are allowed pets and without a damn good reason a body corporate has exactly zero chance of forcing someone to get rid of a pet, ESPECIALLY when other people in the block already have similar pets with permission.

Anywho, so in other words the law itself stands behind the cats, while the bylaws come down on the side of a cat-free zone. But there is precedence for someone to be given permission to have a pet since the by law was put into effect. If she just bought the place and moved in, nothing would happen and everyone would be happy, but since she has asked for permission she has also given them the power to withhold that permission.

Naturally, no pet owner is going to buy a house if they aren't permitted to bring their pets with them, so without this permission our sale is dead in the water. Suzy and I spent a rather anxious week last week waiting on a response from the executive committee, and trying to catch our El Presidenti to talk it over. We didn't catch up with her until the weekend, and didn't get a decision from them until monday night.

What we were told was that while she is welcome to move in and bring her cats, as the by law states no pets they were not willing to give written permission. So in otherwords, they were going to say No even though the answer was Yes, and torpedo our sale in the process. I spent roughly half an hour to 45 minutes discussing this with the president in an attempt to change her mind, and much to my own surprise managed to do it. Eventually what turned her around was the fact that the last group to move had done the wrong thing by just moving in and effectively given permission, while this woman was trying to do the right thing and was going to be punished for it despite noone caring about a pair of cats.

Anyway, long story long we wrangled a very condition-laden approval for this woman to bring two cats onto the property if she buys it. And after only a week and a half, what efficiency! She was a bit spooked by the conditions, but we asked the agent to stress to her that noone really cares about her cats, the executive committee just don't feel comfortable about breaching the rules in writing.

Fortunately, she still seems to be interested but I suppose it goes without saying that it isn't that easy. Today she has announced that she needs to research what she feels to be a fair price for our house (what the holy hell was she doing last week, twiddling her thumbs?) and left it at that. We now have no idea when we are going to hear from her, it could be tomorrow, could be next week... could be never.

Why couldn't this just be simple? Gah! One thing is for sure, our new place better brace itself because it is going to take a hell of a lot to convince me selling up and moving again is a good idea!

PS: NCIS has been on in the background while I wrote this... god it sucks, I used to like that guy in Dark Angel, but this is just awful.