Day 8 -- The Waiting Game

The week finally caught up with us, and we finally slept past 7:00. Heavenly.

But that just meant that we needed to hustle to have breakfast and meet up with Candy. We reviewed our second choice, the one that had accepted our offer. But seeing it a second time, we started to have doubts. The location wasn't as great as we remembered, it didn't have the appliances we remembered, and the walls were very scuffed and dirty. But it's a back-up, so we updated our requirements list and headed back out. We saw a couple more, and then went back to our first choice.

Candy is an awesome agent. She is on the phone all the time, doesn't take no for an answer, and has a great attitude. I'm glad to be on her team in this thing, because I'd hate to get in her way. She was really working hard to get our first-choice offer accepted, but the landlord already had an offer for the same price from someone who wasn't asking for as many concessions and who could move in sooner. It was looking bleak, especially when the landlord told her to not call again unless we had accepted the higher price.

Then it really got complicated. Candy was looking for any available apartments, and discovered the one we had made an offer on with Jack. It's common to work with multiple agents, but we still felt bad. Candy decided that she was going to try to get a hold of that listing.

We had planned to meet up with Tony to go shopping in Puxi, and Candy -- who had been ready to say goodbye for the afternoon -- suddenly decided to go with us. She was not going to let us out of her sight! She joined us for lunch, helped us negotiate in the market, led the way out to Yu Gardens for more shopping, and even volunteered to go with us in one taxi while Tony and Sergey went in another. We were trapped. :-)

Yu Gardens, by the way, was really cool. It's basically a shopping area built around an historic garden. Many, many shops built into traditional-style buildings. We wandered around and bought a few things, and while we were there, we heard back from Jack -- our offer had been accepted.

Candy -- who was also trying to negotiate an offer for Tony at the same time -- pounced. While we were in a store, she called the landlord and basically tried to hijack the listing. (Again, perfectly acceptable in SH real estate practices.) And she's so nice and so helpful and does it all with a smile, that you can't help but hope she gets it. She did call our first-choice landlord and tell him that we had an offer on another place and were ready to take it, in case he wanted to reconsider his best price. And he did. She's really good. :-)

So now, we wait. We've told Candy that we'll take the apartment that comes in at the lowest price. (Though we really, really want it to be hers!)

Tonight we had dinner back in Thumb Plaza, at Malone's American Bar. Burgers and fries, and the comfort of seeing kids in high chairs and knowing that if the kids refuse to eat noodles and rice, there are chicken fingers around the corner. Now we're watching Mission Impossible (the one set in Shanghai!) and marveling that we know the streets they're talking about and the landmarks they are showing.

On Sunday we'll go to church, and among our prayers will be one for our new home. We would really, really like to have it settled and signed when we leave on Monday.