more purging…

Well we had our first garage sale about 3-4 weeks ago and now that we have to list the house we had another one this past weekend. Between the two of the them we netted about a grand and got rid of an awful lot of stuff. The stuff left over from this one was sorted into three piles – stuff to go to the curb for freecycle; stuff to go to the mission; and stuff to be retained for the last of our garage sales that will be held just after we have a signed and agreed upon house contract. Then we will have a final living estate sale to get rid of all the larger items in the home that we don’t give away to our kids or sell with the house.

So once again we will try to sell the house and we have decided to list it with a flat fee real estate listing firm here in Texas called the Listing Firm. For a nominal fee they will list our property on the MLS listings and we will offer a three percent “buyers finders” fee to any real estate agents who find us an appropriate buyer.  We will then turn over the paperwork to our lawyer to close the deal.  This will save us at least $4,000 in saved listing commissions that agents normally charge. So today it is clean up the garage and get the house to a “ready stage” for showing… then it is pictures taken for the web… and finally pay for the listing and we are ready for the next round in the saga of “Can we sell our home!”…  wish us luck!

Something different…

So now that the house sale went south we are taking the time to get a few more things fixed up… the carpets cleaned… and do a few of the items on the inspection report.  Checked off the list are the repair of some wood rot, the replacement of the garbage disposal, and a minor electrical repair.  So what was next? 

Well my daughter was coming home for the summer and I was to fly out to Charlotte, NC where she would pick me up at the airport. So I left my house at 3:00 am to catch a flight out of Austin,Tx to Charlotte where I arrived near noon. My daughter was bit late but picked me up and then we started the long drive home… over 1000 miles. We drove to eastern Louisiana and spent the night before pressing on the next day. We got home around 2:30 in the afternoon and after all the turmoil of last week and the long drive I felt I needed a break… So we drove into Bryan, Tx to attend the Texas Reds Festival.

As they say the Texas Reds Steak and Grape Festival - can be described in just one word: Fun! There were over 20 wineries that offered their finest wines and for a small fee we were able to taste many of them.  Our favorite of the day was a Texas made Pinor Noir so we purchased a bottle and made our way over to the main stage and waited for a couple of local favorites Kevin Fowler and the Tejas Brothers to play live in concert.

Other than the stifling heat the rest of the day and night were just what we needed…

What could possibly go wrong… :)

Well you never know a deal is done until the deal is done… Our buyers backed out at the last moment… well actually they did have 7 hours left. So what does this mean to us?

Well for one thing it means we don’t have to move out of our house in mid July. And that my friend is a good thing! We looked everywhere in town (we live in a college town) and there was virtually nowhere that would rent to us for six months.  Now when you live in a college town all the apartment complexes think they will be able to rent to students coming into town for a twelve month lease.  They also believe they will be at 100% occupancy even though history suggests if they hit 90% it will be the mother lode… So other a a few places in the “hood” we could not find a decent place to stay.

So anyhow our buyers backed out at the the last possible moment.  So what did we learn from this transaction? First, we were in the right position to not sell unless we really needed to… (we didn’t); second, not all brokers are out for your best interest (I really thought their broker didn’t do a good job for them); third, have a better plan in place than we did in case someone wants to buy your house earlier than you possibly thought, and fourth, we need to get a motorhome soon in case this happens again.

The history…. we negotiated back and forth and thought we were giving them a great deal… lower than we originally thought! When it got down to brass tacks we finally decided that we were not desperate sellers and they had to meet our “fair” asking price… well, they didn’t. Instead they spent nearly $1,000.00 on inspections, termination fees, and title insurance and backed out of a deal they were within $1,200.00 of securing. Why? We will never know but we have decided it was best for us since we now don’t have to move out in mid-July. That was causing a lot of stress since we don’t retire till March 2nd, 2011.

So it is back to ground zero but we are wiser and slightly richer and wiser… they paid us $100.00 to terminate the contract and they also paid for three inspections… pests, A/C, and full house inspections… so we now have a checklist of all the possible bad things that prospective buyers might dislike… now all we have to do is take care of most of the repairs…… and find another buyer…

…that will not move in before September 1st    ;)

Too much going on…

Well the inspectors were suppose to come to the house at noon today and when I arrived at 11:45 the A/C inspector was already working in the driving rain. It started raining early here and rained all morning but there was a lull in the activity and the A/C guy was busy checking pressures. I let him do his thing and checked my rain gauge… 5.72 inches WOW!  And more in the forecast… so the phone call happens… the other two inspectors canceled due to weather.  Wimps!

So we are rescheduled for Friday at noon to finish the inspections and determine the verdict. In the meantime we are diligently looking for a place to stay once we are evicted from the home… A word of caution for all you full timer want-a-bes out there… If you live in a college town like we do it is very difficult to find a place that will rent to you without a one year lease. We only need 6-7 months… so we are still looking… I want to thank those of you who wished us luck in selling the house; now we need your well wishes for finding a place to live! Yikes!

wow… part 3… HOUSE SOLD!

Well what a whirlwind week and half we have had… after listing our house on zillow.com and having a lady call for a showing that resulted in three grueling days of cleaning the house we had gotten an offer on the house! This was during the same week we scheduled our first garage sale… so we had a showing while the garage was stuffed to brim with “stuff” lots of “stuff”… Oh well…

So we go back and forth with the lady (offer, counter offer, offer counter offer etc.) and we finally come to an agreement on everything so unofficially the house is sold!  Pending a good inspection there should be no reason for it not to close on July 16, 2010.  We will take the signed contract over to their realtor later today. This has turned out to be a real interesting deal since it will be an all cash purchase so there will be no appraisal to worry about, no financing to worry about, only the inspection of which I am not really worried about. So what am I worried about?

Where the heck are we going to live until we hit the road? We have no RV and now after July 16th we will be homeless as well… We have slightly less than five and one half weeks to sell all the rest of our stuff we don’t want… find a place to live… move into the place to live and still shop for the elusive RV…

Wow… now back to the garage sale… we did get rid of a lot of stuff that people actually paid us for… even better there was a fellow who asked about a grill and a smoker to which I replied that we were going to eventually sell everything so I took him out back to look at the smoker and grill and he said he wants them and will call back in 3 weeks to come get them (since I still need them for a while yet).  He also put dibs on my chest freezer.  Another young lady heard our story and has dibs on our bedroom suite, our couch and loveseat and a side board. This turned out to be a good garage sale…

Now if only we had an RV before we have to move out on the 16th…

wow… part 2…

Well remember that phone call I got after I put a bunch of photos of our house along with a description on zillow.com?  Remember we hadn’t quite gotten to the point of actually listing our property but I did put in a "Make me move!" price when I first set it up. I know many of you were crossing your fingers for me (please keep doing so).  And after three days of hard labor cleaning and primping and staging the house the lady and her and her husband and their realtor in tow came by the house for a visit and a walk through.

I walked them through the house to let them get to know the place better and then I chatted with the realtor.  I heard a few of their comments about how they could add this or modify that… They stayed about 25 minutes and the only question they asked was “…if I was firm on closing no sooner that August.”  To which I replied … “Everything is negotiable! :) :) :) 

Well that leads up to today and I first got an email from the lady saying I should be hearing from their realtor later on … sure enough I did and he said he was going to bringing me an offer to review later this evening or tomorrow. So now here I am writing the blog waiting to hear from him… I think they are making me wait just to make me nervous and more negotiable… not gonna work… nope… it’s not gonna work… dang it where is he!!!

Keep those fingers crossed and wish us the best...