A little over nine months ago my husband took early retirement, my younger daughter graduated college and found a job and my older daughter changed jobs to one in her field. This was the moment I had been waiting for to finally try to sell our home and move. We have lived here for 25 years and raised our girls in this home. It has been very good to us over the years, but now I want to make one last move to a less congested and quieter neighborhood. We tried selling and looking last summer, but got nowhere and decided to take some time over the holidays to regroup and start over again. This past January we placed the house on MLS and priced it to sell. Many people came to look at it and one finally made an offer that we accepted. Now what?
This week we are supposed to sign the contracts being prepared by our attorneys. I saw two houses I liked, but nothing came of it. We made on offer on the first one and were told they accepted someone else’s and we are “backups.” I don’t feel consoled by that at all. The next house I only saw online. It was in move in conditioned and suited to my taste. I contacted my realtor when he got back from his week’s vacation and told him I really want to see it. Two days later he said someone made an offer they accepted and they aren’t showing it any more. Great! The area I am looking in, which is not far from here, has about ten to twelve houses on the market. I check online every day for new listings. The prices ranges from over one million to in the mid 300’s. We are just looking at the ones mid-range, but you can see there are just a couple of homes in each price range at the moment. Keep hoping more homes will come on to the market.
By the end of this week, the contract should be signed, we will be out seeing the homes that are still available. I hate to get discouraged too soon. I am still hoping to find a nice home where I want it, the way I want it. I am not in the mood to remodel a whole house and really hope I don’t have to.
So it’s a house hunting we will go! I’m glad it’s happening finally. The wheels are in motion and the weather is starting to cooperate. Wish me luck! Meanwhile, I need to go through every room and throw out what I don’t want and pack what we aren’t using. I can’t wait until the day we are all settled in a new home.
P.S. Since I haven’t posted this blog yet I will add to it. Saturday we went to see two homes priced higher that I wanted to go. One was being offered at $645,000 and the other at $749,000. The one for $645 looked gorgeous in the pictures, but had two major drawbacks, no garage and no basement. I had to consider how that would affect my ability to resell it years from now. However, when I went to see it, the pictures were much better than the reality. What appeared to be spacious and move in condition, was actually small and needed some work. Add that to the missing garage and basement and the house was way over priced. I was told that they refused an offer of $600,000, which I still feel is too high. Just for the hell of it, because there are so few houses in my area, we went to see a home priced at $749,000. You would expect it to be in pristine condition for that kind of money? I did. But as we waited outside for the realtor (who hadn’t seen the house yet), I couldn’t help but notice the bricks on the steps were lose and worn and the white handrails were quite rusty. I am already having a small fit. Who asks for ¾ of a million dollars for a home and the first thing you see is a mess? Around the corner from the house, one side of the street is dug up for replacement of water pipes. I know from experience, that when that kind of work is done, it not only takes a very long time, but rats come out of the open holes. I actually saw a rat near my park when they were doing work on those streets. Again, I was no happy. We waited there about 15 minutes. I don’t know what took my Realtor so long to get there, he says he couldn’t find parking. Maybe that’s because of the street work? The house is only one block away from a very busy boulevard, not my ideal location. Now we go into the house and are asked to take our shoes off…something about new carpet. I almost can’t tell you anything at all about the inside. The owner says it has five bedrooms, one in the basement, two on the first floor and two on the second floor. The yard was a mess, broken concrete and dead grass. Honestly, I hated it all. If he dropped the price to $600,000 I wouldn’t even make an offer. It’s disgusting how high the prices are and how little you get for that money. Unfortunately for me, this is the area I know and am comfortable in and most important, this is where my family lives. I have to hope something comes along soon that makes me happy.
If you have a minute, say a little prayer for me.
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