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Sold! Thank you, timeline and tips
We sold our house today. Thanks so much for all your help.
Here is our timeline:
Early May - declutter (including renting storage facility) and deep clean
Mid May - place house on market at 10% lower than our comps sold prices, not list prices.
First weeks until under contract - 3-5 showings a week. We were our realtor's most active property
First week in June - first open house
Mid June - low ball offer that fell through. They were 100% financed and preapproved for 20% less than our list price. Couldn't come to a price we were both happy with so we walked.
July 4 weekend - offer at 2% under asking, we countered at 1% under and were under agreement.
First week in July - inspection (we did $200 in repairs from this) and appraisal (came in 10% over selling price)
End of August - ready to close when Irene forced BoA to reinspect all houses closing that week. Closing delayed 2 weeks.
Mid Sept - were given 5 close dates, none happened
Last night at 6PM - get a call that we are closing at noon today, final walk through an hour before that
6 weeks until we were under contract. 4 months until we sold. Not bad in this market.
We bought in 2006 at the peek and sold bringing $30K to the close. It hurt, but our new home is bigger, in a far better town/school district and 1/4 the commute we had before. Plus we got a great deal on our new home. Money well spent.
Here are the tips and things I wish I knew before this whole process started:
- We paid off our cars in April thinking it would help our credit score. It hurt us since it was one of our few bills. I wish we had waited a bit to pay them off.
- Anything attached to the house had to stay. I wish I had replaced our expensive window hardware with the cheep stuff we had when we moved in.
- At least for us, our realtor told us with every other showing that she thought we would get an offer. She was so optimistic, and all I wanted was reality.
- Be ready to move the day you put the house on the market, or at least start getting ready. I had not started researching preschools, neighborhoods, anything when we got our first offer. I was very unprepared to move at that point.
- Clean EVERYTHING even if it means hiring a pro. We had our housekeeper come every week for a deep cleaning, plus I cleaned every day. Our house was older, but shined like new.
- Don't count on your realtor for staging advice. Take lots of photos and post them on here or ask a honest friend to critique them. Figure out which angles are best and what else you can clear out of rooms.
Overall, it was an ok experience. Our buyers had it much worse with the delay. They had moved all their things into a Pod and their kids had to start school in their old school. We moved into temporary housing near our new home a little earlier than we had to until our new home was ready - not a big deal. We are scheduled to sign on our new house Monday.
If anyone has specific questions, ask away. Your advice has been really helpful. Good luck to all you sellers and buyers!
met DH 1995 ~ married DH 2006 ~ completed our family 2008
Life is good!
Re: Sold! Thank you, timeline and tips
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BFP #1 EDD 12/14/12, C/P 4/9
dx: DOR
Clomid + trigger + IUI #2
Everyone welcome.
Congrats!! this gives me hope for next year when we list our house.
did you take out some sort of loan to cover what you had to bring to closing? I'm hoping the market will improve (ha!) but I'm realistic that we'll need to bring cash to close....we are saving up as much as we can but I wonder if there are loans, etc we could look into this year.
We took the money out of our savings. We still have a good chunk of change in there, plus can put 20% down on our new house. We will make it up later. There were no loans as far as I could see.
Our other options were to rent the old house, but we didn't want to be landlords. Or do a short sale. We had too much pride to do that, plus wanted to buy a new one and couldn't with the hit our credit score would take with a SS.
Good Luck! I hope the market improves soon for everyone's sake. We were very lucky to be in the savings situation we were in.
met DH 1995 ~ married DH 2006 ~ completed our family 2008
Life is good!
met DH 1995 ~ married DH 2006 ~ completed our family 2008
Life is good!
Yep, we headed out west. I'm only just getting back into the swing of things myself. I would not miss a 3 hour commute AT ALL lol. I work from home full time now and love it, it's a 5 block walk to the preschool, 10 blocks to starbucks. I've died and gone to heaven.
met DH 1995 ~ married DH 2006 ~ completed our family 2008
Life is good!
***Nestie Bestie w/ TheDeatons***
Good for you but not everyone can do what you did. We can not sell at less than the comps. Everyone including the realtor says our house is a good price. We had one showing in the past 2 months.
We can not afford to lower the price, that would mean bringing even more money to the table then we will have to now. Guess we are stuck for now.
Talk with your realtor. Ours pointed us to a couple long term corporate hotels as well as some short term condos. In the end, we moved in with my folks since we didn't want to commit to longer than we had to on a lease. They are sad to see us leave on Monday. GL!
met DH 1995 ~ married DH 2006 ~ completed our family 2008
Life is good!
We didn't sell at less than our comps because we wanted to. I would have loved to brought less to the table than we did. But our commutes were causing a huge strain on every aspect of our lives. If we had listed it at a higher price, we very likely would still be on the market right now. We were lucky to have enough in savings to make this possible. We took the money out of savings as an investment in our quality of life. I would do it again in a heartbeat.
My advice there was just to let sellers know that the price they paid is completely irrelevant to the price they will sell it. And if you list at your comps selling price rather than listing price, you will get more traffic. There are things you can do to make your house sell even in a tough market.
met DH 1995 ~ married DH 2006 ~ completed our family 2008
Life is good!