Selling your house too??

[cats7494]

Cleaning...organizing...sorting....open houses...and so on...blah!
All the joys of trying to sell your house!

We bought a new house - which of course is exciting...but now we have to sell our current house.
Any one else in the same boat? How is it going??

 

[cats7494]

Anyone?
Please tell me it gets better!

 

[DisneyGirl]

I built a new house last year. Gave myself 6 months to sell the old one. It sold in 14 months. It was the worst experience of my life, and I will never do it again (buy before I sell, that is). But, the real estate market is extremely depressed over here, and has been for several years. I keep hearing how great the real estate market is everywhere, but I didn't see it, and neither does anyone else around me... maybe you are in one of those great areas??

 

[BelleBeautyandtheBeast]

I put my house up for sale at the beginning of May and just got a decent offer last week. I counter-offered and they signed all the papers on Friday.
There was 25 showings. 25 times I had to pack up all 3 kids and leave. 25 times I worried if the house was clean enough.
Ugh! I hate house selling. The average house around here is on the market for 3-6 months (some as long as 24). I got lucky, but I also priced my house below what it is worth so I could get rid of it quickly.
As long as the home inspection and their mortgage process goes smoothly we should be moving at the end of July.

 

[Castlebound]

We just listed our house on Friday. Our agent told us that the market has been soft for awhile in our area. The up side is that we priced our home on the lower end hoping to get more interest faster. We are building a new house. We have the land, plans, and are getting bids from contractors. Much to my DH's dismay we will not start building until this house sells. We have another house to live in during construction of the new house after we sell this one. My parents bought a house before they sold their old one and they paid two house payments for almost a year before the old one sold! Even though the bank has told us that we can afford both, I'm the one who does the budget for our family and I think not.

We have lived in this house for nine years so we have tons of stuff! It seems to grow as I pack it. The house in general looks picture perfect but I'm still working on the basement and attic. I just want to know where people put all of their stuff when they are trying to make their house look like the perfect family who never makes a mess lives there?

 

[cats7494]

We are up to only 7 times so far - we have had 2 open houses ..and 5 showings made by appointment. We have another open house again this upcoming Sunday.
By far the worst part is making sure the house is completely/perfectly clean each time. (plus getting our pets out of the home is a big pain in the rear!) Plus trying to work full time and we have an infant and a VERY busy 12 year old dd..

The house has only been on the market for 2 weeks - so I know we may have a while to go. Yesterday we had an open house and one lady came through twice and she came back to see it again this morning. We do not want to get our hopes up too much - but she is interested at least.

So...I am keeping my fingers crossed and constantly cleaning! I am kinda feeling like this little guy:

 

[FreshTressa]

We spent all spring getting ours ready to sell.

We sold it last weekend, but now we are all nervous waiting for it to close.

There is all this stuff we put off doing that is REALLY hard to get motivated to do, like pack the last of the stuff, clean out the garage and to fix a couple of things they asked us to fix.

Sometimes I almost want to just go back in time and stay in this house cuz it has been so stressful.

 

[roliepolieoliefan]

We have ours up for sale. Its been up for about 2 months now. We've had about 25 showings and had to pack up 2 kids and 2 dogs everytime.

It is a total nightmare. Not even 1 offer. All feedback has been positive , just not what they're looking for. I think I'm going to end up at the funny farm by the time we sell it if we ever do.

 

[mickeysgal]

We're relocating due to a job change. We originally went from a house with a 3 car garage and a full basement to a house on a slab (no basement) and no garage - just a shed for our stuff. Talk about having to get rid of stuff. Now we're going back to what we call normal - a house with a basement and a garage. Since we have to get in quickly due to school schedules, we're going to have to carry two payments while this one sells. I'm not sure I have the steel guts for this. Its going to be a bumpy ride.

 

[binny]

Tressa you sold?? What happened with your psycho neighbour? I missed a whole lot!


To the OP, Lots of people to commiserate with you here
http://www.disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1033391

 

[FreshTressa]

Yes...the people that bought went and talked to the neighbor and they actually liked each other.

I had to cut down the trees (3k) and we sold for 455k (10k under asking) but the people really like the house and the inspection has cleared so now we are just waiting to close on the 17th of July.


Thanks for asking!!

 

[juligrl]

We built our new house last year. We were lucky because we put our house up FSBO and it sold for asking price in 3 days. Our buyer was great to work with - totally flexible, so we had a month between closing on our new house and our old house.

It does get better. Weed out the "junk" now, don't take it with you. You'll see the light at the end of the tunnel soon enough. Just hang in there!

 

[binny]

good for you Tressa! Sorry about the trees. They actually LIKED each other??? wow.
Well good what the saying? Better them than you?


I warned my buyers about the neighbours and when I went over a couple of weeks ago to pick up a package they said " you werent kiding were you???" LOL

Nope, sorry.


Good luck OP we were on the market for 5 weeks earlier this year and as you can tell from that post, it wasnt fun. I did learn a lot though.

Clean like your Mother In Law is coming to visit that became my mantra!

 

[momx3boys]

Our house has been for sale for 7 weeks and it has been a very hard, stressful 7 weeks. I have 3 kids to load up everytime and keeping the house presentable all the time is very hard. People calling and then not showing up.
I'm hoping my house selling woes are soon to be over. We have someone interested in our house, we are waiting to see how much they are approved for. It may fall through, because their offer and everything they want is not going to happen. So we will see if we can come to an agreement, hoping to hear tomorrow.

 

[FreshTressa]

We probably would have gotten more had we waited longer, but honestly, the people were the 'right' people for the house. They were well qualified, put down a good amount of earnest money, weren't haggling too much, and I thought that it was worth it to get out while I could and avoid the stress.

And, isn't there a saying that usually your first offer is your best offer??

 

[DisnyMama]

Escrow is closing this Sunday! When I put the house on the market the buyer made an offer for 10K less and I countered for 1K less than my asking price and she said if I would throw in the washer and dryer-OK! SOLD!! The house is only 5 years old so I new that the inspection would go well which it did except for he stated in his report many "recomendations" not things that were neccesary. I live in the city of Canyon Country which is in Los Angeles County. The county does not require seismic gas shut off valves. However, the city of Los Angeles does but since we do not live in the lity of L.A. we are not required to have one. Well, the buyer lady wants me to pay (give her a credit of $300) for the seismic shut off valve because she can't get homeowners insurance without it. NO WAY! THAT'S NOT MY PROBLEM! My realtor can refer her to a company that will insure her without the valve. Plus, she wants me to pay for all the recommendations. I said no. She also wanted a blanket around the water heater because she is coming from the east and is worried about the winter. We don't need them here. It doesn't get cold enough but I will humor her and wrap a blanky around the water heater for her-that I will do.

 

[cats7494]

Well - we got an offer last night! It is $7,000 less than asking price so we are countering today at $1400 less than our original asking price..
Keep your fingers crossed for us!

 

[Paula H]

Maybe if I join a thread with others in the same boat, it'll get things moving here!!

DH has accepted a job in Orlando and is supposed to start August 1. We put our house here in CT on the market 1 mo. ago today and then DD and I headed to the Orlando area to see if we could find something. We did - and were able to negotiate an excellent arrangement with the sellers, almost all terms and price in our favor. We entered into the contract confident our house here would sell quickly even though the market has slowed significantly. The house here is 10 years old, in a very desirable neighborhood and with tons of upgrades. Our only problem is that we're the the original owners, and when we built, we decided to not "finish" the house by putting on the attached 2-car garage, and instead upgraded and had add'l square footage of living space. There's room on our homesite for the garage. Well.... we've lowered the price twice and now are at the point where we can only accept an offer of $5,000-$7,500 less than the list. We've only had 3 private showings in 4 weeks, and two open houses generated no serious buyers. Despite the garage issue (which made it difficult to accurately price), the house is now a "steal" at list price. Other comps are 20-30 years older, on much smaller lots, and have much less square footage. Lack of garage is clearly reflected by price - we're now listed $25,000-$30,000 less than recent listings in our neighborhood. Still nothing.

Moving to Fla., DH is taking a bit of a pay cut, and we can't afford both houses at the same time, nor can we afford our house here and rent down there (in event he went without me and the kids). Once we have a solid contract and an approved buyer, we're planning to go. The big "glitch" is that his new employer has already been waiting for him longer than planned, and probably won't let him push back his start date anymore. Major stress on all sides - we're not happy with our agent, who isn't very agressive, and any marketing and pricing ideas have been ours. What began as "dream job", great new house, exciting move... has now turned into a nightmare.

Going to buy a St. Joseph statue this afternoon - maybe that'll do the trick.

 

[barkley]

we put ours up mid march and got a contingent offer a week and a half later for full price (but we priced a bit lower than the competition)-we only accepted a contingent because (1) it was pouring rain with no end in sight, and (2) we could still show it and accept a non contingent offer. right before their 30 days was about to expire they sold theirs and ours became a done deal-we closed/moved right before memorial day.

I'M SO GLAD WE SOLD-the market has TANKED in the past month or so here-the same houses that were priced just above ours are now still sitting at 30 and 40 THOUSAND dollar reductions. the market is flooded with people who are looking at their adjustable rates adjusting them into foreclosure so they are selling at way below recent market value to try to minimize their losses.

we lucked into not having to do any open houses (our agent reserved those as "last resorts" since around here so few sell this way (mostly 'lookie-loos' trying to get ideas on how to decorate their homes, or other sellers looking at the competition).

we're in a rental now, and i'de forgotten how nice it is knowing if there's a problem LET THE LANDLORD DEAL WITH IT! i also like not having to make those nasty mortgage payments. the equity can sit in the bank and grow till we move out of state and we can become those "annoying buyers"

p.s.-i've been tempted to call our old neighbors and ask if anyone's ready to kill our buyers yet (we were very tempted at times)-last time i drove by they had most of two streets (lived on the corner of a cul-de-sac) congested with all the vehicals they could'nt fit in a 3 car garage + the 3 car driveway