House hunting

George Mallone was having a difficult time finding a house in his area.  An estate agent took him on a tour of availible properties.  The first house that they drove by was a delightful, three bedroon bungalow with an immaculately kept garden.  The problem was that there were already five cash offers on the house and there seemed no way for the Mallone's to get it.  That night George's wife confessed, 'Only the Lord can find a house for us.'

A few days later, during the second week of October, their seven-year-old daughter looked at them at dinner and exclaimed, 'God has told me we will have our house on November 12.'  George welcomed her opinion but cautioned her about date setting in the name of God and to be careful lest she believe something that might later turn out to be false.  Nevertheless, she returned to dinner the following evening and repeated the same message.  George started to ponder this in his heart.

As the week's passed there seemed to be no time for house hunting.  Yet as November 12th approached George started to sense a great deal of excitment.  Finally, the day arrived and he decided to casually drop by the estate agent's office.  

'Did you receive my call?' the estate agent asked George.

'What call?' he replied.

The estate agent went on to explain that he had tried to contact him thirty minutes earlier to tell him that there had been legal complications in the sale of the three-bedroom bungalow, that it had gone off the market for several weeks, and had just been placed back on the market.  

Immediately George phoned a friend, they rushed to the house and made an offer.  This was accepted on the afternoon of the 12th November.

Something similar happened to our family.  We placed our house in Fermanagh on the market last spring.  The market is slow and trying to sell a holiday home seemed a big ask.  I guessed it would take about eighteen months.  There may have been a couple of viewings (I can't remember) but there were no decent offers.  There was one offer so far below the asking price that the estate agent hadn't even run it by us.

In September we started to look at houses in Limerick.  We were praying for guidance.  Our estate agent had informed us of a viewing but we were no longer dependant on selling Fermangh, my parents had offered us an interest free loan. 

Anyway after viewing some houses we came to an agreement to put in an offer on one house.  The afternoon on which that offer was accepted the phone went with good news from our estate agent.  Five months after we had put the Fermanagh house on the market, and just a number of hours after we had had our offer on the Ferndale house accepted, we had our first realistic offer and it was above what we had been expecting.  We agreed on the sale of Fermangh the next day.  Caroline believes this was a confirmation from God.