the story of the new house.

The following post is to document the adventure that we went through in selling our first home and buying our ‘forever’ home. Though it is really for me to look back and laugh at, I thought you might enjoy reading as well. This is a long one… kudos to anyone who makes it the whole way through :) I’m a talker (or in this case, a typer). And I’m sure I’ve left out plenty of details. There are a few pictures at the end, for those of you who make it all the way down there.

Alrighty… here we go….

I’ve learned and/or confirmed a few things during this journey.

1. I am not good with stress. Even of the positive sort.
2. I like to know what is going on. I’m not so good with dealing with what I don’t know, or cannot control.
3. Realtors have a tough constant dedicated career, and I admire them for what they do.
4. I do not think that buying/selling your home brings out the best in you.
5. I am not too keen on selling/buying a home again. Though I do realize I am not totally in control of that (see #2).
6. Everything happens for a reason, though the reason may not present itself when you’d like it to.
7. God’s plan is amazing, even when we struggle to see what that plan is.

Ok… so I’m sure I learned more, but let me walk you through this amazing journey that we went on while selling/buying our previous/new home.

I uttered the words… “Are you kidding me!?!” (both in the positive and negative sense) too many times to count. Because of that… I will be using AYKM!?! for that phrase. (Is that what you texters do?)

Let's start from the beginning.

-We contemplate putting the house on the market (this actually starts in the summer of 2008, but we don't get really serious til 2009) with the low interest rates and ‘good deals’ you can get on houses, we figure it's now or never if we ever want to upgrade to our 'forever' house.

-We decide to try. If we can profit X amount, then we can make it work. But we have to get X amount, and if it isn’t done by the start of school, we will re-think things.

-Get the house ready and get the house listed the beginning of April.

-I struggle with the battle of keeping the house clean and leaving for showings on other people’s terms, with 2 kids in tow.

- mid June, receive our 1st offer. $15,000 less than asking price. Plus $4,000 closing costs. Oh, and we will take your washer and dryer, and those nice metal shelves in your basement too, on top of everything else. AYKM? No thanks.

-More showings. and more showings. Blech.

-We go to the beach. Get the house all nice and pretty so that it can be shown anytime while we are out of town. We don’t get a single call for a showing the whole entire week. Really bummed. Not less than 2 hours out of driving home from NC, we get a call… “Can we show your house at 5:00 tomorrow?” AYKM?? Sure.

-Get home from the beach at 11:00PM. We are welcomed by putrid maggots in the sink. Ohhh… now we see why there were no showings. Someone was looking out for us :)

-Showings Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday night after coming home from the beach.

-We seriously consider taking the house off the market. Interest rates are going up to numbers that don’t make this upgrade possible. It’s getting close to school time. I am getting tired, of it all.

-Dave calls to say he told the realtor to take the house off the market. Something just doesn’t feel right, and we decide to keep it on at least that weekend for a scheduled open house.

-The following morning while out on my jog, I see a rainbow (AYKM???), and that rainbow is for me. I litterally hear the words... "Everything is going to be OK." ok... take the house off the market? ok... leave it on the market? what do we do?!?!? ahhhh.

-We decide to look at some houses on the Friday that Dave has off for July 4th. To see if anything is even out there that we’d like to buy, and if we still want to try to sell our house.

-We look at 4 or 5 houses. The 1st one we walk into I say to Dave… “I’d put an offer on this today if our house was sold!!”

-We think about it over the weekend, and decide that we can’t not TRY to get this house. (We will call this one the NEW house) We love it, the neighborhood, the price is close to what we want… it has almost everything on our wish list, with some extras. There is a current offer on this NEW house, so we wait to hear back to see if that person’s offer went through or not. We decide that if we would get this house, we can lower our price just a tad on the OLD house to try to sell it ASAP.

-The other’s offer didn’t go through on the NEW, so that Monday we place our 1st offer on the NEW house.

-Wednesday we get a counter offer on the NEW, and we counter back. We also have a showing on our OLD house.

-Thursday, we get on offer on our OLD house!! AYKM!!! Much better than the 1st offer back in June, but still not where we need it. We counter their offer.

-A big fat (unexpected) check comes in the mail. AYKM?!?!? Yay! (I always joked during this process, that a check in the mail would be helpful, little did I know we’d really get one!)

-Friday, another counter from the NEW house. We counter back (trying to get the best deal. You know me!!)

-In the meantime we also have set up times for 3 more showings on our OLD house!! One Friday, two on Saturday. One of the Saturday people is a 2nd showing. Our realtor calls all 3 of those realtors to say… “Hey, there is an offer on this house, so if you are interested, act quick!”

-Saturday, I’m scrapping all day. I am a mess. Dave calls around 11:00 telling me the people who came through the 2nd time are going back to their realtor’s office right that second to make a FULL PRICE OFFER on our OLD house!! AYKM?!?!?! And only $2,000 closing costs (as opposed to the $4,000 of the other offer) YAY!!

-We take that deal. I am awake all night (as in… doing laundry at 3:00 in the morning) feeling ill wondering about the NEW house. We have to wait till Monday to hear back from them. MONDAY!!

-Monday. They counter again on the NEW house. We take it!! We are done bargaining :)

-then we pick out carpet, hardwood flooring, a new fridge, stove and microwave for the NEW house, paint ideas, we get utility stuff in order, school paperwork, newspaper, mail, cleaners, carpet cleaners, vents cleaned, all that good moving stuff….

ok… so that’s about where the fun ‘everything is going our way’ stops :) I did enjoy it though, while it lasted. I knew there would be a wall somewhere…

-home inspection on the OLD house. Nothing major, just frustrating trying to compromise with people on what is to be done.

-home appraisal on the OLD house. Comes back $3,900 under sale price. AYKM??? We write up a list of ALL the things we’ve done to make it a nicer house, and get the price adjusted to only $1,900 under selling price. Argg… better than nothing, but still FRUSTRATING!!! There is a reason we priced it at what we did, and there is a reason why we got a full price offer in less than 4 months!!!!!!!!!! breathe....

-so now we can only sell the house for what it appraised for, and the buyers are not willing to meet in the middle (though they are already getting the house for $1,900 less.) I’ll bite my tongue right here. "I am grateful for them, for buying our home." (repeat until you believe it, or at least until you are calmed down)

-we request to sit in separate rooms at closing, as we are a bit tense with the buyers. Then at closing the buyers don’t even let our realtor in the room!! we all laughed at that, as she is about the sweetest thing ever (see photos below!!)

-we had fun on our end of the closings :)
how cool is our realtor?? making pipe cleaner crowns and coloring with the kids!! oh and she took them on potty breaks too. for real. she's great!! not to mention all the wonderful realtor stuff she did for us very needy clients. Thank you Julie, you are the best!!

stay tuned to read about the actual move and beyond!!

That’s a whole 'nother story.