On the Market

Well, you'll never believe what we've been up to since the last time I wrote.

I am not a spontaneous person. Not at all. But within the last few days we've decided to sell our house and buy a different one. We weren't looking to buy at all. But we decided to take a look at a particular house I had driven by several times and admired it each time I was in it's neighborhood. The price was low enough we thought we better take a look. We saw it once and we fell in love and we saw it twice and couldn't imagine living anywhere else. It's not too far from where we live, it's in the same school district, same ward, and we know several people in the neighborhood. It backs to green space (in fact the nature refuge I've written about) and it's got a really nice kitchen, plenty of space, a sprinkler system, and a three-car garage (G's favorite part).

In the last week, we've tried to make this work. We've thought good and hard about if this is a good idea, negotiated heavily with the sellers, spent hours and hours talking with two different mortgage brokers who are clearly dieing for our business, spent hours and hours talking with our realtor who thankfully lives across the street so he can come over every time we have a question or panic starts to set in. And let's put it this way, he's spent more time at our house than he has his own house the past week. It's been crazy to say the least.

If you know us at all, you know that we research every purchase we make to death. We make a spreadsheet of prices, research features, shop around, and eventually make a very informed decision. It's a little ridiculous, yes, but we've made some very wise purchases and investments this way. Take our current home and G's education, for example.

So what the heck are we thinking making the biggest financial decision of our lives in a matter of a few days?

Now can you understand where our stress level has been lately. But despite it all, we're confident this is a good move.

So, in this "tough" housing market, we realize it's going to be a tall order to sell our current home within the next 60 days. In my humble opinion, our house is totally awesome. But it needed some work in order to make it desirable to everyone else. Fortunately, we installed AC and painted the exterior a few weeks ago. (Which by the way I'd like to publicly thank G for insisting we do both of those things this summer. Without those projects behind us, selling our home at a decent price right now would be impossible.) In the last few days, we've trimmed every tree and bush in the yard (and we've got a jungle for a yard so that was quite a task), laid sod, patched the rest of the grass, laid bark dust, laid decorative rock, power washed the driveway and patio, cleaned the windows inside and out, weeded, planted more flowers, cleaned out the garage, scrubbed every square inch of the inside of the house, cleaned all light fixtures and replaced all bulbs, removed half of our furniture, packed all our personal belongings, got rid of our special yellow couch, touch-up painted, re-caulked -- and that's only the tip of the iceberg. Oh, and G still worked, I still took care of the kids, I did a big primary project and taught sharing time this week, G taught elder's quorum, and I was sick as a dog the whole time. I'm pretty sure I've lost 10 pounds this week because I haven't sat down until right now and I've barely eaten a thing. So that's good news too.

But now our house is clean, it's staged to sell, and it's now on the market. If you know anyone who's looking to buy, we can recommend a phenomenal realtor.

Our humble home:
$279,900
1550 sq feet
3 bedrooms, 2 baths
Backs to green space
View of sunset
Garden area
Vaulted ceilings
Pass-through gas fireplace
Private and quiet neighborhood
Central AC
New exterior paint
Oversized 2-car garage
Garage and attic storage
Shed

And here are several pictures I took last night: