Selling a house

Selling a house is a hurry up and wait process.  When I returned from my trip to Las Vegas in March, and it was still cold and miserable in Fairfax, Dan and I started talking about a move.  Our biggest hurdle was the fact that I am retired (from teaching) and Dan is still working for Homeland Security.  Dan and his boss(es) had been talking about him possibly working from home as almost all of his work is done on a computer.  Dan put a little pressure on them and they gave him permission to give it a try.  So in April a home office was established and a trial run began. It was a success and permission to work remotely (from where ever we want) was granted!

In the meantime I began work on preparing the house for sale.  Painting, cleaning, packing, more painting, more packing. We hired a firm to check for mold as that seems to be a big issue for lenders these days. No problem with that!  We fixed the garage door which I had backed into a few years back. Oops. (It was cheaper to buy a whole new door than to buy two panels! Go figure.) New vinyl was ordered and installed in the bathrooms.  Carpet was cleaned. I forgot to mention throwing out my back spreading bark mulch around the flowers.  I wonder if I can claim the ER visit as a moving expense?

We talked about who to hire to sell our home as it was not something we planned to sell on our own! We decided on Adam Hergenrother/Keller Williams.  They have a team approach to sell a house and an amazing web presence. Shannon did the market analysis and Keely took the photos and put everything on the web. It hit the market on Friday May 23 at 7pm. (Memorial weekend) We received an offer just over a week later on Sunday, June 1. After a traumatic couple of days and some negotiation, we signed a contract on June 3. I felt certain the house would sell quickly but we weren't really emotionally prepared for the reality!

Onward to the next steps.

Bushwacking to find the boundary markers! Let's see we used maps, gps, a scythe, weed wacker, metal detector, bug spray, reflective markers, mud boots, Google Earth. Found 3 of the original six. Two had been lost when we built the house in 1992. And the last one disappeared after I located and marked it this spring down by the road. WTH?

Installing new photoelectric hardwired CO/Smoke detectors. Expensive but not difficult.

Home Inspection - picky, picky, picky
Not much wrong in the grand scheme of things. A little more negation required but no money needed on our part.

We failed the water test. Bacteria in the water.  Happens over time with a well I hear.  Had to be shocked with bleach.  One bottle didn't seem to do the trick so Dan went to the store to get another bottle. FYI CONCENTRATED bleach is NOT necessary.  But it worked.  Just took forever for the bleach smell to be gone. Paid $95 to have an independent water test done.  Came back clear. One more item checked off the list.

More packing and downsizing.  This part is somewhat painful for Dan but he is learning how to purge.  Lots of fun family photos have surfaced.

Busch Garden Trip

My poor baby!

The Great Escape

We are now members of the vast group of people who have too much stuff and need a storage unit to keep it all.  Actually we have given our children's stuff the boot.  ; ) They have one year to make further arrangements for their items as we didn't give them much warning on our big move. A 5 by 10 unit holds a lot of stuff!

On to the appraisal.  Hope we find out soon how that went.  Good news would be that the offered price and the appraisal match.  

That's all for today.  The next post will be about our yard sale.  The stuff people will buy from someone else ... Amazing!

Have a great day.  Nancy

It's all about the journey.