It's The Colour For The Battle In My Head I Have A Beat In My Life Like Love In My Heart

Midnight Friday was the deadline for our buyer to remove the subjects on his offer. Which seems to be Canadian terminology, if my weekend Twitter conversations are any indication. I'm no expert (ha! understatement!) but my understanding of how it works is this:

Buyer makes an offer. Negotiations ensue. Buyer and seller reach an agreement. A deadline for subject removal is set (usually a week to 2 weeks.) Subjects are the conditions that need to be met (like financing being approved, the home passing an inspection, etc) before the deposit is handed over. Once the subjects are removed, the deposit is made, the final papers are signed, and the contract is binding. If the buyer tries to back out of the contract, the seller gets to keep the deposit.

So. Our buyer had a few subjects that he had to remove by midnight on Friday. If he did not remove his subjects, we could not remove the subjects on the condo we wanted to buy (one of our subjects was that our condo was officially sold because we can't afford to end up with two condos.)

Our Realtor phoned me at noon on Friday to tell me that I shouldn't panic - yet - but that the buyer had a few "concerns" about the inspection. The inspection that was completed on Tuesday. I, of course, morphed into Anxious Hillary with a side of Ranty Hillary (why? Why not voice the concerns after the inspection? Why wait until the last minute unless you're being an ass and trying to renegotiate the price down?) My stress level rose steadily all day as the buyer's Realtor stopped returning my Realtor's phone calls and then peaked when the buyer's Realtor finally called our Realtor to say that he could not reach the buyer.

I was a lot of fun to be around on Friday.

Late Friday night our Realtor called to say that the buyer thought the subject removal deadline was actually midnight on Saturday. Which we chose to accept because we had no other option. Enforce the midnight Friday deadline? What good would that do? We had another sleepless night and then Shawn went off to work while I spent Saturday morning stress-eating my way through a shameful number of grilled cheese sandwiches and blasting Girl Talk and Jessie J in an attempt to divert my nervous energy.

We got the call early Saturday afternoon. Our buyer removed all subjects and the deposit cheque was in our Realtor's hands. We're moving to a new city, to the new condo with the lovely magenta accent wall. And I can breathe again.