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Monday, December 12, 2005

EUREKA!

After five miserable months of trying to sell my townhouse, this glorious time is finally upon me. The buyer had come earlier with an absolutely terrible offer but ultimately decided to accept my counter-offer.

That was Tuesday. My closing date is this coming Friday. I would have posted sooner, but I’ve been a little busy.

So, we had the place inspected yesterday (now I need to have an HVAC guy come out and look at some things @#$&%!) and it was appraised today. All the while the wife and I are packing and shuttling all our worldly possessions to a storage unit one SUV load at a time.

We also went house-hunting yesterday. We did use an agent for that and we found exactly the place we wanted and made an offer last night. After a counter-offer and a counter-counter-offer, we came to terms tonight. Closing on our new house isn’t until 12/30, so we’re going to be moving in with a good friend of mine (and fellow suburban creature) in the meantime.

Here’s a lesson in be careful what you wish for; we spent five excruciatingly long months trying to get to this point. Now that we finally have, life has become incredibly hectic. Here’s how our timeline of crazy is unfolding:

    This past Tuesday: Offer accepted
    This past Wednesday: Sign contract
    This past Thursday: Get my listing agent to sign the contract, get pre-approved for mortgage, get storage unit
    This past Friday: Begin packing
    Yesterday: Home inspection, packing, find HVAC guy, take stuff to storage, house-hunting, make offer on home
    Today: Appraisal, more packing and more trips to the storage unit, try to shanghai friends into helping us move, reject counter-offer on home buy, make another counter-offer, agree to terms
    Tomorrow: More packing, get utilities cancelled on current house
    Tuesday: HVAC guy, more packing
    Wednesday: More packing
    Thursday: More packing, have new home inspected
    Friday: Close on sale of townhouse, more packing
    Saturday: Move out completely by 11 PM, move in with generous friend
Wild! And of course, we still have jobs, pets and the small matter of a ten-month-old baby girl to contend with.

But it looks like I will manage to sell the house myself only a couple of weeks after it was listed online. Proof positive that if you do things right and you’re aggressive with potential buyers, things will work out.

With everything happening this past week and this weekend and knowing what’s coming this week, I’m so wound up that it’s 1 in the morning now and I’m sitting here blogging instead of sleeping. Probably not wise… But who cares? I sold my house! I sold my house!

It’s a great feeling especially after waiting nearly half a year to get it done. I feel like dancing but I won’t because I just don’t do that.

And by the middle of January, we’ll be all settled in to our new house. A fire will be burning, hopefully in the fireplace, the baby will be taking her first steps in the living room, we’ll all be enjoying the spacious four-bedroom floorplan and my beautiful new well-manicured back yard will be peppered with dog excrement.

Life will be good.


Saturday, December 03, 2005

Townhouse for sale!

The story of how my wife and I, tragically betrayed by the world of traditional real estate agents, decided to swim against the tide and try to sell our townhouse ourselves has been well documented in a couple of previous posts.

You can read them here and here.

We’ve made a good bit of progress so far… We have listed through an online realtor that charged us an up-front listing fee and doesn’t take a commission from the sale (though I still have to pay commission to the buyer’s agent). We also installed the new wood laminate floors, which make a BIG difference in how the place looks.

In the last two weeks since our property has been listed, we’ve had four or five people come see the house and a couple have come back for second visits. We also just yesterday reached a key milestone: our first offer. It was a monumental achievement considering that we were listed through an agent for four months beginning in July and never got a single offer, but also a bit dubious since it was also our first crappy offer.

The prospective buyer and his agent came to our house last night and told us that they would graciously offer us several thousand dollars less than our asking price provided that we move out by December 16th and pay all closing costs.

I tried to put compromises on the table, but the buyer apparently had very little wiggle-room financially. I told him that I would be willing to pay part of the closing costs if the rest could be wrapped up in the price of the house. But nothing flew and I’m sure that they are right now negotiating with another homeowner in my complex. If they can find someone to accept their terms, more power to them. Had I done so, I would have ended up paying the closing costs entirely out of my own pocket.

Like I said, we’ve only been listed for two weeks and have had more success than we did during four months with a realtor. I am not yet desperate.

So far, I’d give myself pretty high grades as a rookie real estate agent. I’ve followed up with every agent that’s come to the house, which has paid off so far. That was one of my pet peeves about my former agent; she never wanted to follow up unless an agent came for a second visit.

I’m also contemplating an email campaign to real estate agents in the area, but in order for that to be effective I think I’d have to come up with some kind of added incentive like a cash bonus above commission for the agent that sells my place or something like that.

Anyway, 3 bedroom, 2 bath townhouse/condo available near downtown Alpharetta; lots of upgrades, priced to sell. Want to see how great life would be as the next suburban creature to live in my pad?


Pretty sweet, huh?

Seriously though: buy my house.