Worst Case Scenario

So we had found our dream house, what could possibly go wrong? Quite a lot it would seem.  Our first problem was that the auction was set on a date when we wouldn't be in the country.  We overcame this first hurdle by getting our friends Rae and Stuart to stand in for us, but this wasn't as simple a solution as it may at first have appeared.

Stuart used to be a lawyer and was quite understandably worried about his own liability if anything went wrong with the sale.  So he started to run through with us all the worst case scenarios, such as if the bank valuation came up less than the selling price.  To ensure no potential detail was over looked, he even requested we got a bank cheque prepared for the deposit, as there would be less chance of the bank rejecting it over an anomaly such as a discrepancy in a signature.

That weekend I went to get the bank cheque from the only branch in the city I could find that was open on a Saturday, narrowly missing being held up by the Australia day parade.  So with all our life savings withdrawn and ready to go we just needed to get it to Rae and Stuart before we left.

We invited Rae and Stuart over for lunch the next day and as Gemma and Dan were back from their travels around Australia it was quite a reunion.  The only trouble was, I couldn't find the cheque.  A scenario even Stuart hadn't predicted.  I had left the cheque in an envelope on the coffee table the night before, but just before Rae and Stuart were due to arrive it had gone.  A frantic search of the house ensued, I eventually found the cheque covered in oil at the bottom of the bin.  It seems Barnadi had been tidying up earlier and seeing the envelope on the table, assumed it was empty and had thrown it away.  Barnadi had thrown all our money away! Despite the oil stains the cheque was still intact and so apart from some temporary panic no real harm was done.

So everything was set and ready to go, we flew off on holiday to celebrate Barnadi's boss Sam's 50th Birthday in Thailand and Rae and Stuart went to the auction for us.  With all our hard work we were pretty confident we would have a good chance of securing this property, but it turned out to be the worst case scenario of all, we were out bid.  Our dream house had slipped through our fingers and we were back to square one.