More Thoughts on...

Estate Agents.

They're bastards, and deserve to be put in the same class as lawyers, doctors, politicians, spammers, etc, etc... They are of little value to anyone and are unscrupulous in their doings. Yes, I'm generalising, but I'm pissed off, so if you're a nice person but fall into one of those professions I scourned, please forgive me.

Our move to Hermanus was supposed to have taken place this week, but due to the behaviour of the seller's estate agent, we almost got into some serious financial shit and, as a result, have cancelled our offer on the Hermanus house.

The agent, whom I will call Carl Retief (his real name, in case you're wondering) lied to everyone concerned and now the seller is taking him to the Estate Agents Board. We'll probably hear nothing more about it, but we know something is happening as we had a call from his boss for some information.

He lied to:
1. Us - he didn't tell us the seller only wanted a cash purchaser (who the fuck can afford R1.85m anyway?);
2. The Seller - he didn't tell them we had a house to sell and probably didn't show them the entire Offer to Purchase document as we never got a complete copy of it back with all the pages initialled as we were supposed to, being a legal and binding document;
3. The Transferring Attorneys - they are aware that we have a house to sell before we satisfy the conditions on the Offer, and I emailed them to this effect when they asked me if they could proceed (I told them no), yet last week Carl Retief told them I had given him the okay to tell them to proceed with the transfer which would have put us in a R24,000 a month financial fuckup. Naturally this has to be in writing, which made it even more suspicious.

As a result, there were "snot'n'trane" (snot 'n' tears) by the seller's wife and even Steph is a little upset about it. She had made plans to move in this week while I stayed in Joburg to sell the house and I was going to fly down this week to help her settle in, as much as we could without all our other possessions (and the dogs) around her.

In all honesty, I'm quite relieved it has fallen through, as things were not going according to what I saw as the logical sequence of events. We now have time to sell our house and look for a house down there which need not necessarily be in Hermanus but will certainly be in the vicinity. Up until now, things have been progressing at Steph's emotional speed, which has been too fast to me and causing great stress.

We still have the corporation's blessing to move to the Cape and I'm also away in Saudi Dryland for a few days from Thursday next week, so it helps us in that Steph can now calm down a little, look after our Joburg house while I'm away, and when I'm back we can look for another place for her to stay when she transfers down and I'm left in Joburg to sell off the house.

So...as I've taken the couple of days off between the public holidays (daft government gave the country Monday, Thursday and Friday off), we'll go down to see my folks on the KZN coast. It's been a while since we saw them and I can do some fishing at the same time to satisfy that need. My brother's there too and he's just as avid a fisherman as I am. Maybe we'll go and join Fishman, who is down at Thompson's Bay on the North Coast for a couple of days with his family, also fishing.

Anyway...hope the rest of you are well. Take care, y'all...