Wednesday, April 14, 2010

BRING IT ON BRING IT ON FAVOUR!

Just want to blog about how God is good and how his timing always perfects. We have sold our house and manage to buy our new places and our prayer were answered.

Now let me tell you how we actually get in to this journey. Somewhere is February 2010; we are thinking of venturing into property investments and guess what we do not have any capital to do it, so we decided to check how much equity we have from our home. Maybe we can get some capital. So we talked to a few real estate agents to find out what is market value of our house. First agent we talked to from Barry Plant, he came over talk to Ebbie and give an estimate figure from 630K to 660K base on other sold property around the area. I am not so convince so we talk to another agent from Ray White, this agent is very proactive when he came he came prepared with documents and reports in our area. And the reports confirm what the first agent said.

So we are thinking of selling our house now and upsize, we are currently in a townhouse so no backyard or garden, Ryan & Noel has been asking for a new home with backyard so that can play and run around. This is where it all starts. We decided to put our home up for sale (auction). We set our auction date. Set our open inspection date. Reason we go auction is Melbourne has 83% success rate in auction and generally they get about 15% from that want seller asked for. We also spoke to our mortgage broker on our finances, he told use if we can sell our house for 650K we can go for a new place for 730K to 750K. So everything looks doable. So mum taught the kids to pray during meal time and pray that we can sell the house and blessing of a new home & promotion for mummy and daddy. The kid did it every meal =)

The first open we have good results we have about 8 groups came and view the place and there is 5 people show interests. It was a good start. We all are so excited and start planning our weekends to go for house inspection and attending auctions for our new places. We will start at about 9:00am and go from house to house till about 6:00pm, looking at 10 to 15 houses on Saturday for couple of weeks.

Well all our excitements plunge straight down from high to low and down to depressed when our open for inspection no one comes. It just doesn’t feel right. We still go for inspection and hopping that our next open they will be more people comes. Another week passed. We get even more depressed, all the houses that we like and hopping to get are all over our budget. Some house starting prices is 600K to 650K but when it reached the action day it all closed in the range 830K to 860K. There is no way we can afford it. And horror of all horror there is no one showed up for our inspection again. This is really bad …… somehow we can’t attract people to come to view the house. We still believe that this is a year of FAVOUR and it should get better.

Well we continuing open our house and still no one showed up and we slowly stopped searching for houses …. And guess what my company just retrenched a staff in our team. I would say the whole team got shaken and I felt insecure and felt that I might be the next to go. So I decided to look for jobs. I went for 3 interviews. And the whole interview process takes within 2 to 6 weeks. So life goes on day in day out.

Our auction day finally comes 13th March 2010. There is only 2 groups that came. This is really bad. Coz other auction we went to we are talking minimum 30 to 40 peoples turn up but normally only 2 to 4 interested group that will actually bids for the property. We have 2 groups that is less than 5 peoples. 1 of them wants to buy and the other party just said see how. Auction started no one bids and the one that is interested only offer 550K and agent came in and talk to us and said that is the only offer 550K do we want to consider? Of course we said no we told him that is not what we have in mind is way too low. So we told them we will set price to 600K for private sales. The agent left and we just felt that all our afford for the past few weeks like getting the house ready for inspection and spending hours on the road to searched for houses just wasted and all the excitement just disappeared.

That afternoon I told Ebbie to call the agent and tells him that I decided not to sell anymore gives us the bills and we settled it (adv bills). We roughly calculated that this whole event will cost is about 4.5K to try to sell the house. Advertising bill is about $1500 and then we took a line of credit for the 10% down payment for a new home. The fees come up to $2400 and some lawyer fees that come about $600. Well we tell ourselves take it as tuition fees a fee that going to takes us month to cover it back.

Ebbie talked to Dad about it and I am depressed and thinking about the house should we’re advertise and sell it for 600K? So that we can move on … we still make a good sum even if we sell it for 600K is just that we will not have enough to buy our next property. I can’t sleep that night, my mind just wondering around the whole night. The next morning is Sunday 14th March 2010, getting ready to go to church. I told Ebbie we will have to sit down with the agent again and see how should be proceed if I want to sell it 600K and what our next moved.

During sermon time in church I have called from our agent, so we told him we can’t talk will call him back. After church we called him back and he asked if we can come into his office. Since I wanted to talk to them on our next moved so we decided to go. When we get there and seated down. He shows how the sales contract. He manages to negotiate with the buyer that offers 550K to increase another 40K to 590K. We are shocks we told them not to do anything yesterday afternoon and he still takes his time on Sunday morning to get us the contract. He said is still 10K less to 600K and to help up he decided to cut down his own commission to help us up another 2K so total will be 592K. That is a WOW ! we signed it an sold our house anyway, now we are about 58K short coz we were planning to Sell it for 650K from the starts. But I felt that we should have let go and move on. So we did it.

Now we are homeless and we need to start looking for our home now. We told the agent now help us to find a new home ASAP. We are doing a loan portability we need the old & new home to settle on the same days to save 20K (another long story). Monday 15th March 2010, agents show us a home in Donvale and it has everything we wanted and this house is not on the market yet. The seller just want to test the market and see if the is any interests.

We like it and we decided to make an offer for it. Ebbie asked the agent how much should we offer. He told us not less than 650K and we asked again? How much should we offer? His partner was smiling, giving me the impression (If you asked an agent how much, of course the higher the better, coz that what they earn in commission). Our agent replied just offer 660K and his partner got a shocked looking face. BTW our agent name is David, David told us the seller might counter offer and we shall see what the counter offer is. Tuesday 15th March 2010 David came back and told us the seller said if we are willing to up another 15K to 675K the house is ours. So we agreed to will buy it for 675K. So we sign the contracts. So now we have SOLD our home and BOUGHT a new Home. We are now happy and everything should goes smoothly till the settlement date.

We truly believe that God Favour is upon us. A few days later we meet up with the seller again so I asked them where they are planning to move to. What is their plan? They replied they are now homeless; they are not sure why they sold the house so quickly. Their plan was to test the market and get show of interest then later auctions it. Later we talked to David our agent, he told us the private sales offer is just for us and if we didn’t take it they will not received any other private sale offer and sell it on auction. This is 100% a sign of FAVOUR !!!

The journeys still not ended yet, while our mortgage broker settling our finances for getting a loan for the new house. I got a call from 1 of the company I went for interview earlier; they offered me a Job and better pay. Ryan & Noel prayer all come to pass, they prayed that we can sell the house, buy a new place and get a promotion. It was like everything fits into place perfectly,
We talk to our mortgage broker that I will be switching job will there be any problem with our loan application. His replied YES if I switch jobs there is 90% chance I will not be able to get a loan. Well the good news becomes not so good news. If we can’t get the loan we can’t buy the house and we have to go back in to renting. =( until I have 2 months payslip then look for houses again. and by then we are not sure if we even able to get a good deal. I am 100% sure that God bring us this far he will not abandon us. So I typed my resignation letter plan to submit the next day.

The following day, I spoke to my manager that I want to resign as I had a better offer from the other company. So he asked what if they match it will I stay. I replied I might, and he goes and talk to the director and came back and said the company will match it. will I stay ? I told him I would like to but I know that currently we are not getting much project and I need assurance that I will not be retrenched in next few months. So we go and talked to our director and he give me an assurance that if there is another redundancy it will not be me, in my heart I was Praising God! So I stayed back and I got my increments and assurance for job security. So I have to call the other company that offer me the job that I am very sorry that I can’t accept the offer due to my situation that I am in the middle of switching houses I need my loan to be approved, the director said he understand and he really wanted me to work for their company, he told me just go and settle your stuff and keep in contact and let him know if I am planning to look for jobs again after all my house stuff.

Everyone tells us that switching job & switching house at the same time is CRAZY. Yeah is Crazy for a natural human thinking but not for GOD. I learn this during the Planetshakers 20TEN Conference. When we pray, we pray that HE give us TREE (end result) but God gives us seed. He want us to sowed the seed and watch it GROWS.

I am convinces that from the start God has planned all these for us to get a new house and an increments so that we can pay for the new home. He just want us to be able to see how he do it step by step clearly that his hand is at work and he is in controls and he is provider and we need to do is sowed the seed with FAITH and see it GROWS

God Is Never Late; He's Seldom Early; He's Always Right On Time

3 comments:

NewMe said...

Amen!!! :D

davidlimse said...

Praise the Lord! He leads each step of the way. I rejoice with your family!!

d'Lion said...

Joey, great sharing. Praise God for His hands upon you and your family.