Almost finished…

Loyal readers know that we’ve been trying to sell our condo for almost 7 months now. You know that we had it on for just over 3 months, took it off the market, put maybe 10k into updates, and put it back on the market in late September. In all this time, we have had exactly one offer. One offer that was so crappy it was insulting. One offer that, had we taken it, we would not have been able to afford a big enough down payment on a new place, and thus would not be able to move, so what’s the dang point anyway?

So here we are, going into a very slow season for real estate, with newspapers and financial experts predicting nothing but gloom and doom for the next year or two in the market. Which means, it’s unlikely that we will be able to sell our current place for enough to be able to move, and still live within our comfort zone. We are careful people with our money. We don’t want to have huge debt, don’t want to have payments so large that we are scraping by every month, and things like property tax or insurance throw a huge wrench into our financial wheel. We would like to be able to take a vacation once in awhile. I know, call us crazy.

So, we’ve decided to try one last ploy…our Realtor is going to call the one interested party, and tell him to shit or get off the pot. That we’re getting out soon, like 10 days soon, and if he wants the place, he needs to make a good offer, pronto. Am I hopeful? Sure, in a fantasy-land, optimistic kind of way. Do I think it will work? Not really. This guy is a first time home buyer, so he can afford to wait a few more months to see what the market does. He may see our ‘this is your last chance, buddy’ as an act of desperation, and low ball the hell out of us. If he had a place to sell as well as a place to buy, perhaps his story would be different, he might be more willing to get the move done and behind him before the bottom falls out of the market. See, if you already own a home, you’re affected on both sides. You can accept less for your current home, assuming you can also pay less on the other side. But how much less? $25K? $50K? 100K? At what point do these numbers make you feel queasy? And you kind of have to have a contingent offer made, so that you indeed know you’ll make up losses on the sale of your home in the new purchase. If you save $30K on the purchase, but lose $70K on the sale, that might affect your ability to move, right? For us, it’s enough to make a big difference. We’re already $15k less than when we went on the market in May, and we’ve sunk $10K in, so that means we already have $25K less than we thought we’d have, and people want to low ball us by quite a bit more. Oh, and our neighbor just put his place on the market the other day, and rumor is he’s going to be lowering his price to about $50K less than we’re asking if he doesn’t get an offer in a few weeks. His place isn’t fixed up, isn’t as nice as ours, but still.

This whole thing is wearing us out. It’s exhausting. We’ve put our life on hold for too long. Maya didn’t go to any camps this summer, because we thought we would be moved by then. She has been unwilling to get involved at school, figuring these are ‘short term’ friends, and she’s moving soon. We didn’t take a vacation we wanted to take. We need to buy a new car, as our Volvo is 21 years old and while the engine will probably outlive us all, the electrical and sundry other expensive systems are starting to give way.

So, if there’s no sale pending sign up in front of our place by December 8th, we’re done, we’ll go out and get some new office furniture and make our bedroom/office more practical and livable. We’ll send the stager’s neutral things back to her storage space, and get our books, clothes, furniture, etc., out of our storage space. We can start feeling like this is our home again.

Stick a fork in us, we’re (nearly) done.

~DoSoEvAyMo
1. Today is Wednesday, the day Maya’s school starts an hour later than the other weekdays.  LOVE IT.  So hopefully we’ll sit down and have eggs at the table, instead of eating bagels or waffles on the walk to school.
2.  Really need to make an appointment to get my hair done…it’s looking kinda crappy lately.