Closing The Sale

Well, today's the day! El Jefe and I meet with our buyers at the title company this afternoon and close the sale of our house.

It's been a bit of a weird journey with some comical screw-ups, such as:

• the HOA gave us a certificate of compliance with HOA requirements but noted one minor exception. The exception was evidenced by a photo of our next door neighbor's house rather than ours and it was clear that they had not bothered to check the street addresses when making the report!
• the lawyers for the bank preparing the deed put the wrong block number in the deed restriction. El Jefe had to point that out to them.
• El Jefe also had to straighten out the chain of title for the careless title examiner.

I'm so glad El Jefe is my lawyer!

It will be odd to hand over a key to someone else, although we will lease back for the next couple of months until the new house is ready. Now I'll really have to accelerate my "downsizing" efforts in preparation for the move. We're getting excited about re-inventing ourselves in our new space, though.

Picky Picky

Here's today's lesson in Real Estate 101--Inspectors don't think they've done their job unless they can find something to complain about.

Thanks, Homeowners Association, for the nit-picking.

Just sayin'.

Getting Inspected

Yesterday was pretty tense Chez QG.

Our prospective buyers scheduled their inspection of the house. They arrived at 1 pm and didn't leave until well after 6 pm. St. Betty kindly let Beatrice and I stay at her house so we could get out of the way. You don't want to watch people crawl all over your house looking for defects!

Now we wait to hear their response to the inspection.

House Under Contract !

We're stunned. We got a good offer on our house literally within hours of its listing on the MLS service Friday. The buyers even offered to allow us to remain here after closing while our new home is being finished, so we worked out the details and accepted the offer.

Although the deal isn't done until the closing, we're so excited!

As if that wasn't enough, shortly after we accepted the offer another agent asked to bring clients to view the house even though we told her we had already accepted an offer. After the viewing, she called me and said if our contract fell though to call her because her clients wanted to make an offer as well. Our buyers have 10 days to do an inspection and decide whether to proceed.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow....As my SIL said (after she said Get Out and Shut Up) "It was meant to be."

~doing the happy dance~

Listing This Old House

I remember seeing our house for the first time in the late '80's. El Jefe and I had decided that we would investigate what was then the far-flung 'burb of Sugar Land in search of a new home. The one we had was very well located in near-town Houston, but at over 70 years of age was turning into a veritable Money Pit. Plus we faced years of participation in the Private School Shuffle, which appeared to us to be a wildly over-rated and stressful exercise.

We didn't buy this house right away. We looked at several other homes in the neighborhood, but ultimately I wasn't ready to make that leap of faith 20 miles away from everything that was familiar to me. So we stayed where we were.

And yet. I kept thinking about that house. Maybe it was because it reminded me of the home I grew up in, but whatever the reason I ultimately agreed about a year later to make a bid on the home. We did and sold the house we had immediately. So it was pre-destined. Wasn't it?

Yesterday I sat on our patio overlooking the pool watching Beatrice chase birds and realized how much I would miss our backyard. How many pool parties for the church youth group, friends of our girls, neighbors and family members did we have here? Too many to count.

It's a very happy house. There are lots of big windows that bring sunlight into the house in every room. We had a few tough times here in the last 20+ years, but mostly we had very good times--holidays with extended family and friends; special celebrations of graduations, engagements, weddings and birthdays will always be special memories tied up with this place.

Last night we signed the listing contract with our realtor. It's time to move on and let another family grow and be happy in this old house.

We are excited about the new home we are building for our "empty nester" years. El Jefe remarked that both of us lived longer in our present home than anywhere else in our lives so of course we will miss it.

Selling a home is always a stressful decision, but in this current economic downturn there are many more unknowns than usual. We'll just have to see what happens and hope that the right buyers will come along in a reasonable amount of time.

Wish us luck!

Fixing To Sell

Since El Jefe and I committed to build a new home last fall --just before the great economic crash-- I've been watching a lot of HGTV to get tips about readying the house for sale.

I'd never seen HGTV before, but Portia, my SIL and nieces introduced me to it. It's a FantasyLand where there is always a happy ending after the homeowner heeds the advice of the "stager".

The last month or so, we have stepped up our efforts to spruce up the place by--

• repairing and painting "dings" in sheetrock and trim
• getting the roof repaired from IKE damage (just replacing a couple of tiles)
• setting up portable gates to keep Beatrice and Olivia out of the formal dining and living rooms where they like to go and leave little surprises
• removing clutter, one room at a time (with many thanks to Portia who spent one weekend cleaning out her sister's bedroom and the guest room)
  
• making weekly trips to drop off donations at the East Fort Bend Human Needs Ministry
• weeding the flower beds
• donating the piano to a Galveston church that lost theirs in IKE

Yesterday our realtor called saying she would be coming over with a photographer next week and wanted us to have a heads up. So now we need to finish up by--

• Taking the old stationary bike out of the bedroom and donating it
• moving my desk
• Donating El Jefe's easy chair in our bedroom because it takes up a lot of space and Beatrice chewed it up
• Taking the leaf out of the kitchen table so it doesn't take up too much space
• Replacing the tired potted plants on the patio with perky ones
  

Here's what I'm not doing, despite the advice of HGTV--

• replacing all the '80's bright brass sink fixtures and cabinet hardware
• refinishing the wood floors (which would be the entire downstairs)
• replacing kitchen appliances with stainless steel ones
• removing wallpaper in dining room and Portia's bedroom

My theory, supported by our realtor, is that if we price the house appropriately, the buyer will be able to do those things according to their taste.

The process of showing the house begins around March 1. The house next door to us have been for sale for the last 18 months, but is quite overpriced. There was a foreclosure down the street that just sold this month. There's another house that is comparable to ours a couple of blocks away that has been for sale for more than a year--also overpriced, IMHO. We're hoping we'll be very competitive. But in this market, who knows?

My SIL offered her home as a refuge when I have to leave and take Beatrice with me for a showing. El Jefe is pretty calm about the process, despite our atrocious market timing. I'm trying to take my cue from him and "be anxious for nothing."