Cashing In Those Karma Points

After a summer of just bad news and things not going our way, we seem to be in the middle of a luck streak. Obviously, we got a house in Oakland exactly in the neighborhood we wanted. When we first looked at the house it was staged with the previous owner's things and the basement was FULL of all their possessions, much of it nice stuff. Our friends had talked to the new owners (sons) during a garage sale they were having and asked about the stuff. They mentioned they might just give it to the next owners. Which is us. And that caused a red alert in our brains. As the paperwork has progressed, we mentioned to our realtor about all the stuff in the basement possibly going to us. So she had been working with the sellers' realtor. In the end, it seemed they had already decided to keep most of it and we might get the old stove. A bummer, but one we could live with.

Like I said in an earlier post, we met one of the owners and had a fantastic conversation with him. We also wrote them a letter telling them how much we couldn't wait to move in and how we planned on keeping the original charm, and would love to have a picture of the previous owners, and some other things if possible. As of Monday, we only were possibly getting the stove. Tuesday morning our realtor called and informed us we were getting everything. EVERYTHING.



Our jaws dropped. Beds, furniture, dressers, dining room table (all dark hard woods), and a ton of vintage equipment and appliances. More than I could possibly list here. The house will close a week before we move in. We will need to spend that entire week going through the pile and deciding what we want to keep. give to friends, sell, and donate. Because we have a huge pile of our own crap that's coming. But I couldn't think of a more awesome cherry on top.

But there's more! This week the house appraisal came in and was $8,000 less than our offer. The sellers accepted selling us the house for $8,000 less. At this point I'm hoping we didn't just drain our karma bank account. Stay tuned for pictures of the haul in a couple weeks.