Real Estate Update and Link Love

You know, growing up I moved a lot.  Not because I was a military brat or preacher’s kid or any of the usual reasons people move a lot.  My parents were just the sort who built a house, lived in it a few years, sold for profit, and built bigger.  So I’ve sort of been through selling a house before.  Many times.  But it’s not at all the same as doing it yourself when the buying of the next house is dependent upon the sale of the current one.

The whole process is stressful under the best of circumstances.  When it’s in the midst of a serious buyers’ market, it’s much worse.  I mean, it’s great for the moving up to a bigger house half of the equation, but terrible for the selling part.

When we started out listing our house, it was before we were ready.  But we’d already made and had an offer accepted on the next house we wanted.  Which was as close to perfect as we were gonna get in this price range.  So we got our collective butts in gear and GOT IT ready.

It’s been on the market for 2 weeks now, has shown six times, which is actually a lot for this time of year in our area (being a college town, our selling season really runs from May to August).  But no bites.  We’ve consistently asked for feedback, what else can we do?  We’ve done everything right.  We’ve updated everything, it’s all a neutral color, and decluttered as much as humanly possible (NO we are not relocating the dogs for the duration, nor are we moving the motorcycles that get USED to commute during the high gas crisis–we have limits).  We are not THOSE PEOPLE who refuse to change for the market.

Yesterday I totally hit that “WHAT?  YOU DON’T LIKE MY BABY?  HOW DARE YOU!” point about my house.  We spent two months renovating before moving in and I totally wanted to show a before and after book to buyers.  I was talked out of it.  Anyway the house is cute and it’s in a PERFECT location, close to the university and downtown.  But there’s a problem.   See, our number one detraction is that we only have one bathroom.  There are just two of us, and while a second bathroom would be nice, it wasn’t a necessity.  And I just can’t fathom all these people overlooking the cute that is the REST of the house because they aren’t willing to share.  I can’t make my house something it’s not.  It’s small, cute, and has one bathroom.  DEAL WITH IT PEOPLE.

So then at 4 o’clock I get an email from my realtor with a low-ball offer on our house.  It was for less than 2k more than we paid for it 5 years ago, completely unimproved.  Considering the money and sweat equity we poured in, it was more than an insult.  Our realtor said their realtor told her she really cautioned them against going that low, but they said that was only their opening offer.  Dude, 20% off the asking price is not reasonable in any universe.  So we’re making a counter offer for what we’d really like to get.  Their realtor doesn’t think they’ll come up that high, but they MIGHT come up to the lowest point we’d be willing to accept (not that we’ve told them what that is).  The good points of their offer is that they don’t want a home inspection, which means no additional repairs for us to pay for, and they want to close in 30 days.  So…we shall see.  Life might get even MORE crazy REALLY REALLY FAST.

And just so that I can reward those of you who’ve been patient enough to read through all this boring crap, I wanted to link to two AWESOME writerly posts I read this week.

This was a fantastic post about sexual tension by JJ of Uncreated Conscience.

And this was an equally awesome, food for thought post, from Wordplay about Villains and Heroes and what they should have in common.

 

5 thoughts on “Real Estate Update and Link Love

  1. I have to admit, I adore living in my apartment, where people come and fix things for me, and I don’t have to worry about it being worth less than it was when I moved in.

    But if I ever wanted to move into a house, I would never, ever offer only 80% of the asking price. And I would be much more likely to buy a house if there were any in this area that had two bedrooms and one bathroom. I mean, I don’t have children – what on earth do I need two bathrooms for? It stuns me that that’s a point against buying. It would be a feature to me.

  2. Hope you’re able to reach a reasonable compromise with the people who made an offer on your house. I know how frustrating it must be, especially when you’ve got your next house all picked out.

    Good luck with the not going crazy thing 🙂

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