One More Offer???

When you are waiting to hear back about an offer on a house, a 16 hour time difference is maddening!!! Business hours in NZ is the afternoon/evening for us and during our business hours, New Zealand is sleeping. Plus, we submitted our offer on what was Friday in NZ. Sunday night, we received a counteroffer $28,000 over our initial offer. Wow! This may be harder than we thought. We increased only $5k, not willing to pay too much over GV (Government Valuation) or RV (Council Rating Value). The vendors’ attorney all but called us either cheap or without funds to our attorney. He also spoke of two other interested purchasers, one from Russia and another from Australia. He said the vendors will not be countering. Disappointed, I began pouring over the listing websites again in search of a “plan B”. Our attorney, however, had also spoken with the agent (realtor) who indicated we were fairly close to an acceptable price and that the Russians had purchased something else. She made no mention of any other interested parties, Aussie or otherwise. I spoke will Billy, who of course was at work, and we agreed on a top dollar amount we were prepared to spend on this property. I then emailed the agent and basically told her that if the vendors are at their lowest acceptable price then I guess we were done. (I can play hardball too!) I thanked her for her assistance and suggested that perhaps she’d be the agent on another property that may work for us. Before she even received the email, the agent called me after having spoken to our attorney and was quite concerned that perhaps we were calling it quits. She indicated, as she had with our attorney, that the venders were prepared to accept a price just over our last price. She encouraged us to make one last offer over X amount but I told her that X amount was our top price we were willing to give on this property. She said she’d speak with the vendors and to go ahead and submit that amount as our final offer. So we submitted our last offer…