Another blog written in
Minnesota: So it's done—I have an agreement to sell my house. In a way, I'm
sad. Really sad. I love my house so much. I'd saved forever to have it built
and got to pick everything myself: the flooring, the lighting, the counter
tops, and the paint colors. This house has some awesome energy.
On the other hand, it's a relief
to sell the house as well. It's a worry off my mind and I'll finally be able to
buy a home in Georgia instead of having a temporary place to stay. It's moving
forward, accepting that Atlanta is where I live now. Minnesota, though, will
always be home.
I believe in serendipity and
think it was in full force on my house sale. The very first couple of days that
I was home, there was an article in the Minneapolis newspaper about housing
sales in the Twin Cities. The article said that there were so few houses
available on the market, that people were afraid to put their homes up for sale
for fear they wouldn't find one to buy. That was very good news for me.
I set to work on the house. I've
watched enough HGTV to have some ideas on how I wanted to stage the house. In
earlier visits to MN, I'd already gotten rid of boxes and boxes of stuff—all
donated to various charities in the area. The books I donated went to the
library.
We (my parents and I) started in
the basement. We broke down the metal shelving units—the wooden ones stayed up
with all the many books I'm moving with me. We dusted rafters, swept the floor,
but things away so they weren't stacked everywhere.
Then we moved upstairs. My house
has three bedrooms. The one at the front of the house is where my office is.
That was already setup the way I wanted it and was easy to take care of. The
second extra bedroom was a disaster.
When the painter guy came, we'd
shoved a ton of stuff into that room since it wasn't going to be painted and
other rooms were. I ran out of time to fix it then; now I had to get it done
right. After much work, it was staged as a child's bedroom, complete with
Scooby Doo pillow and stuffed dog. It ended up looking really nice.
We went through the whole house,
cleaning as we went. No drawer or cabinet was left untouched. And we were into
week two and my dad was complaining about how long it was all taking. Didn't I
understand I had to have the house listed before I went back to Georgia?
He raised my stress level
considerably and it was already pretty darn high. Insomnia became my nightly
companion and I'm still dealing with it as I write this.
I'm not even sure how it
happened. My dad ran into a neighbor and somehow the topic of my house came up.
The neighbor wanted to take a look at my house because she and her husband were
looking for something smaller. My dad told them they could come on Friday.
Major frenzy cleaning mode hit
because while we'd been cleaning inside
the drawers and cabinets, we hadn't been cleaning
as in vacuuming the floor or dusting the surfaces. And then there were all the
smudges and streaks on the walls to the basement. Two days to get everything
done and finish the final setup of the house.
While I firmly believe this had
to be done, I really didn't think they'd like the house. It's much smaller than
their house and I'm contemporary/modern in my style and picked lighting
fixtures and countertops that matched my style. Most people are traditional in
their décor.
You don't even want to know how
shocked I was when I heard they wanted to buy it. So now I'm in a position
where I have to—gulp—negotiate. OMG, I hate negotiating and I hadn't read the
chapter about For Sale By Owner in the House Selling for Dummies book because I
fully intended to hire a Realtor. Now came frantic research on how to price a
house and hours at the library trying to come up with comparable houses. A
nearly impossible task since my house
was built in 2006 and pretty much every other house in the surrounding
neighborhoods were built in the 1960s or earlier.
To keep this from being even more
epic, I'll skip to the happy ending. We reached an agreement on the house with
very little trouble.
There are couple of
contingencies attached. First the housing inspection. I'm confident that will
go well since the house is new and I haven't noticed any trouble, but I can't
help but worry. I'm not an expert and who knows? One of the guys at work had a
hidden problem that he'd never known was there until his house was inspected
after it was sold. And I'm a worrier by nature.
The second contingency is a house
sale, which I know you're not supposed to agree to according to the book, but
I'm pretty confident everything will go through. Just in case, though, send
some good vibes my direction. I need all the help I can get.
