Souvenir Photo Studio, by Al Bourassa: Sunday July 10, 2022 Househunting

PLEASE bookmark this page and check daily.

Older Blogs: https://cuencaupdates.blogspot.com/ and https://cuencaresidency.blogspot.com/

Please see my best artworks for sale at my websites: http://souvenirphotostudio.neocities.org/ or http://saccc05.tripod.com/

******

Sunday July 10, 2022

No walk today, I slept in, and thankfully so, because it has been an exciting but stressful day....

After last night's nice meeting with the potential housebuyers of our home, I was in a better frame of mind to go househunting today. I rushed to finish my chores to go with the realtor Diego at 10am.

As usual, the very first house we looked at was the best. It is vastly underpriced at $90,507 USD at today's exchange to the drastically falling peso price of 400,000,000. It is huge, built by a fellow who lived in the USA many years, built to USA standards, good electrical, etc, and in good shape. He later deeded it to his daughter who lives in New York. They buy and sell many properties. I forget exactly, but I believe the house has 5 or 6 bedrooms, all with bathrooms and good showers, etc., good big kitchen, etc! And it has parking for about 6 cars, only 1 covered though. It has greenspace for the dogs way in the back left corner, and a large avocado tree.

Now some people may consider the following as big pluses, but not me... It has a large swimming pool that I do not have the will to use or maintain... Cristina, as usual thinks it is no big deal.... Behind the swimming pool is a party area with bread oven building, etc. Then there is a two-storey building with pool equipment, change rooms and a bathroom on the main, and 4 bare rentable rooms with one common bathroom/shower above. All pretty useless in my book unless I fence that whole side off with the pool....

After looking at a few other houses in the country, some even grander and more expensive, and then some just plain awful ones but with huge monster yards with tons of fruit trees, I began to really warm to the idea of the first house... Living in town is infinitely safer and more convenient than the country, and the price was too good to pass up., even if it meant coughing in extra cash...

I have a short movie of the front but it is too big to post here apparently... See the photos below.

We had lunch and, based on what I knew, I talked to the Father, then the son-in-law in New York and advised them that we wanted to deal, since our buyers were eager. We discussed deposits, and would confirm details ASAP back and forth. We went back to have another look at the house and met the Father again but nobody had keys to go in for another look. The handyman had the only set of keys and he was in Armenia, 1.5 hours away. We made an appointment for another viewing at noon tomorrow.

We came back home around 3pm and I started doing calculations and figuring where I could come up with 60,000,000 pesos or $17,586 Canadian for the big down payment.... It was then that my dear wife decided to impart to me the silly information that our buyers needed to sell an Apartment in Bogota first.....!!!!! I was flabbergasted that she did not tell me this last night when they told her...!!! That was a complete game-changer and I came within an ace of losing a big deposit over the lack of such important information.... Unbelievable!!

So I felt like a complete fool when I had to completely backtrack with the owners... Now we are back to nowhere and I can only revive the deal when, and if, our buyers are completely firm in buying our house! We cancelled tomorrow's viewing.

Cristina says that Diego may have another buyer for us from the USA... That would really make things easier if money exchanged hands outside of this crazy country.

While I am angry at the abrupt change of events, I am happy that we found the nice house, but also relieved at the reprieve from all this stress... Stay tuned.

I hope you enjoy the pictures (ALL uploaded backwards of course!).

That was the day’s excitement.

******

If you want to borrow a picture to share with family and friends, Facebook or whatever, at least PLEASE give me credit for the photo.

NOTE that you may click on any photo for an ENLARGED VIEW.