Posts Tagged ‘Open House’

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Kids… Let’s Go See Some Open Houses


2010
03.01

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Posted in Buying a Home, Open House | No Comments »

Day 63 - 28 to go. We are having the mold retested on tuesday and have postponed the remediation til the 8th. The inspector (using term loosely here) didn’t do a baseline comparison of the exterior and we have found out that this is definitely something you do when testing for mold. Geez! How hard is it to do a job right the first time these days?

 

Well, we still haven’t heard regarding our counter offer on the foreclosure house that we submitted nine days ago. In the spirit of keeping our housing options open, we went ‘Open Housing’… with the kids.

 

The first house we didn’t even go in. My husband and I just didn’t vibe with the neighborhood. Way to suburban for us. I felt like I was on the set of Edward Scissorhands, so we drove onto the next locale. My kids didn’t even notice, they were both thumbing away on their machines.

 

The second house was cute, in a nice ‘normal’ neighborhood but it was a bit small. The kids started arguing over which bedroom was going to be theirs even after we told them we weren’t even going to buy this house. My daughter gave up and decided she would room in the basement using the pool table for her bed. She was quite excited about this.

 

The third house was in the Homeland section of Baltimore City. Big house on a busy road. 4 bedrooms, large basement detached garage, and a kitchen that needed updating. My son looked at me with a big smile on his face and nodded… “I like this one.” Again the two of them started fighting over claiming rights to bedrooms. My daughter even stood in the one that was “hers” with her arms crossed and a mean pouty look on her face that said… “I’m not moving from this spot… Go get my things, I’m moving in!” It was nice, but didn’t feel right.

 

The fourth house was in the Mt. Washington neighborhood. A contemporary that was very nicely and recently redone. We really liked it. Nice sized kitchen, large floor to ceiling windows, beautiful bathrooms, and… one of my favorite things, a sun porch. The only problem was where would we put all our junk? There was no garage and no basement. We did walk around it a few times soaking it all in, trying to picture living there, but we couldn’t get past the storage issue. Yeah, where would I put my collection of “I can’t remember what’s in that box, but I know I need it” things. As we were leaving I realized I only had one child. Where was my daughter? I couldn’t find her. She had closed herself in a closet, again pouting over the bedroom choices. This time she wanted the master because it had it’s own bathroom.

 

Today Roxie, our real estate agent, is taking us around to a few more places… this time without the kids.

 

BTW – A birthday “shout out” to my Mom and my niece. Have a Happy Birthday!

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We Got an Offer!!!


2010
01.27

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Day 31 – Ladies and Gentlemen, The Show is on the Road!

 

Holy Cow people we actually got an offer on our house! And not from the “second showing rainy day” buyers, but the couple who came with the “Bowtie” agent! That’s right! Uh huh!

 

Whoo hoo! My husband and I had our moment of euphoria. We did a little dance like giddy school girls and had smiles on our faces a mile wide. Then we took a look at the offer… Well, ok, not bad. It’s a tad low, but overall not bad. At least the people didn’t lowball us! All the stress we were feeling in preparing the house, making it just so, quickly turned into a new kind of anxiety all together… Negotiation Stress!

 

Fear and Loathing in Negotiation: How Anticipatory Stress Affects Bargainers. I have a feeling I’ll be able to write the text book on that one when this process is over.

 

My friends, we have to counter. It’s too low. But what do we counter with? We don’t want to scare them away. For God sakes, don’t scare them away! But it’s too low. If we loose them when will another buyer come along? Could be weeks, months. My smiles and jubilation lasted all of about 10 minutes then turned into a worried grimace. It was 2:45 in the afternoon and I realized I had to get into carpool. My head was swimming the entire way. By the time I reached the school to get my kids not only did I have no recollection of the drive in, but I had developed a migraine. “shhh. No talking on the way home kids… Mommy has a headache.”

 

Earlier in the day I was wondering to myself… Where did everybody go? It was very quiet. What had happened to the swirl of interest? Shouldn’t something be happening? Did the two interested parties go away?.. Was it something I said?.. The waiting was killing me. Alright, I needed to focus on something else… work… kids… the future. We are having another Open House on Sunday I guess I could start cleaning now or do the laundry or something. And just when my mind was tangled up in work my cel phone rang and it was Roxie, our real estate agent, with the news.

 

I am now at a loss. I don’t know what to do with myself. I guess I’ll wait to see what tomorrow brings. Roxie is meeting us at 2:30 to discuss our options. I have a feeling we are in for quite a ride… STAY TUNED!

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The Contractor


2010
01.26

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Day 30 – All Quiet on the Northwestern Baltimore Front. One month in, two potental parties interested… I guess that’s pretty good

 

So the following morning I got the kids off to school, did the morning dishes, made the beds and showered early to accommodate the 8:20 am arrival of the contractor. My real estate agent showed up first. Then soon after the “second showing rainy day” buyers agent showed up with their contractor. The people themselves… did not. I found this strange. Don’t you? Am I alone here? They must be extremely busy people to entrust their agent to handle the potential and future changes to their new home. Plus, I don’t think I would ever actually have the arrogance to ask my agent to handle something like that without me. Maybe the way I was raised? Just seemed odd to me.

 

So, they walked around the house and I sat at my desk and controlled the dog on his leash. They were very quiet. Kind of hush, hush. A whisper here, pointing there. What exactly did they not want me to hear? Do I really care what they do to the house once I’m gone? No. Go for it… Remodel to your hearts content. Just BUY MY HOUSE ALREADY!

 

They were here for maybe 20 minutes, not too long. And that was all. They were gone. I did notice muddy footprints on my rug in the hall and in my bedroom, on the wall. (Sorry, couldn’t resist, I had a rhyming thing happening there.) Anyway, there was mud and I have to make it go away. We do have an Open House here on Sunday. (oops did it again.) Not only did I have to rush around this morning, but now I have to get on my hands and knees with the resolve carpet cleaner.

 

Maybe while I’m down there I can have a little one-one-one with the Man upstairs and see if he can hurry this process along.

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Why Do We Do This To Ourselves?


2010
01.22

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Posted in Headaches of Selling Your Home, Showing | No Comments »

Day 26 – Not much new to report. Just waiting for the showing on Sunday. We have also rescheduled our Open House. It will no longer be Valentine’s Day. We are shooting for January 31st instead.

 

Why do our houses look their best when they are for sale? Sell anything else you’ve used for a while and that ’s just not the case. If I were to sell our ride-a-mower for example, it is not in the same or better condition than when we bought it, plus it’s covered with caked on grass. A car… same or better condition… don’t think so, sure you vacuum it out, but the leather is never the same. A dining room set, used scratches and gouges to prove it. But my house… o-ho-ho-ho ho, MY house, it’s looking better than I’ve ever seen it! Hell, it looks even better than when my Mother comes to visit. I’ve got orchids in my bathrooms for crying out loud! And there are actually hand towels in there! I am currently living in a place that is comparable to a 5-star hotel! The problem I have with that is… Why now? Why hasn’t it been like this the entire time I’ve been living here? Who am I trying to impress… oh right.

 

When we sold our last house we went to the extremes to sell it. We refinished the original wood floors, repaired and painted the wood ceiling in the sunroom. Cleaned every square inch of molding. We even went as far as to take all the glass knobs off of the interior doors, strip the paint off of them, polish the brass and reattach. This processs took a whole 2 weeks, and lots of counter space… just for door knobs! Once we moved out and the house was still for sale we went even further. In the master bedroom we put a fresh coat of white paint on the walls, repaired a window that had looked like crap for 12 years and installed new wall-to-wall carpeting. Just to entice a buyer. Did I ever get to enjoy that… NO!

 

Don’t worry… I get it! Yes, I understand why… Because our homes increase in value and we are selling them for more than we bought them for. Real Estate is an investment… Well, not this time sister! I’m not selling my home for more than I bought it for. I’m selling it for 10% less than I bought it for! And that’s not including the costs for all the updates! Yet, my home has been polished head-to-toe. New paint, random holes patched, updated heat pump, brand-new instant hot, a couple new windows, new exterior door to the pool (I knocked a hole in the exterior of the house for this one), and I totally re-did the pantry with a beautiful and expensive glass tile backsplash. Bitter? Yes, a bit… It’s in far better condition than when we bought it. It is… almost perfect.

 

The other day we had a new window pane installed in our multi-light window at the front of the house. The center pane was dreadfully foggy. You couldn’t see the trees in the front yard through it. I now have an unobstructed view, and it is beautiful! The guys did a great job on the sill too. Which I’m going to have to paint this weekend! I can now enjoy it. But for how long? Hopefully only for a few months more. But come on! Why didn’t we change it out when we moved in and enjoy it for the last few years? Why do we do this to ourselves?… It’s disturbing.

 

I’m sure whichever house we buy we will spend many blissful years polishing once again… Getting it just right. Let’s just hope once it’s finally done we don’t move out the next day and if we do… at least with profit in our pocket!

 

Amen!

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The Nightmare of the Last House We Sold


2010
01.14

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Posted in Home Inspection, Open House, sold | No Comments »

Day 18 – New open house set for Valentines Day. Hopefully not as big of an event in Baltimore as a Raven’s Game. Agent preview went well, the potential “out of towners” will be by on Saturday for a looksy. Cross your fingers!

 

The last time we had a house on the market it was a NIGHTMARE! The following is what happened in a nut shell:

 

Our cute little house sat on the market for quite some time. Stupidly, we bought our current house before selling the last one (oops, won’t do that again). We dropped the sale price of our cute little house many times with no avail — we got desperate. So, we rented it… to a cat lady… WHO TRASHED IT!… It was so awful! I have never seen or smelled anything so fowl. We had to pull it off of the market.

 

After many headaches, much cleaning and disinfecting… did I mention cats? We finally got an offer. Way lower than I was initially hoping for, but with three mortgages and the house in it’s new state… did I mention cats? We needed to take what we could get. So we signed on the dotted line.

 

Oh, but wait, it’s not over… There was the now infamous Home Inspection. Yes, my friends, major plumbing fiasco! Who says the inspector has to run all the water in the house and flush the toilet in the basement all at the same time? Our basement flooded. We’re talking a foot of water down there! My cute little house was swimming in sewage. Arrgghh! So it looked like we might never sell the house and toss the cat lady to the curb. But thank God, our buyers were determined. So, one plumbing crew, one bobcat, one trashed and dug up front lawn, one brand new sewer pipe to the street and $5,000 later, we were ready to close.

 

Closing day was finally here! We did our final walk through of the house amongst cleaning crews and Animal Control… oh, did I mention cats? Finally many, many, many months later, the selling of our Cute Little House was OVER! …I was drunk by noon.

 

Was it the ending of the nightmare? We had hoped so. Let’s just say… “Your Honor, that cat lady must have nine lives.”

 

meow

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Selling the Homestead


2010
01.12

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So… We have decided to sell our house. Yes, in this market! Selling our home was a decision that my husband and I did not come to lightly. It has been quite an interesting journey so far. My mother-in-law suggested that I blog about our experience. I basically laughed at her. Me? Blog? That would mean I would need to… WRITE! I haven’t written anything except emails since a few art history papers in college. Writing is not something that I do. I’m an artist not a writer. But, Hey, I decided to give it a go. This might actually end up being very entertaining.

 

Ok, here it goes… We are on Day 16 of being on the market. Let me just start by saying we are located in the vicinity of Baltimore, Maryland and our first Open House was this past Sunday. During the Ravens Game! Wild Card Playoff Ravens Game. Where our Ravens (and yes, I’m a fan!) Trounced [bash, beat, bury, bust, clobber, conquer, cook one's goose, crush, fix one's wagon, flog, make mincemeat of, murder, overcome, overwhelm, paste, pommel, put away, thrashed, walk over, walloped, wipe off the mat]  the New England Patriots! …Our Open House was from 1-3… NO ONE came!

 

I have a feeling selling our home will be just like that Raven’s Game. Although, unfortunately… I’ll be Tom Brady.