Selling a house

Phase 1 (Preparations): Complete

Our data gathering trip to Aberdeen is complete and we are back in the US. We had a few goals for the trip:

  • Learn more about Aberdeen and which neighborhoods/villages we think we’d like to live in;
  • Meet with colleagues at RGU and get the professional connections started; and
  • Sell our current house in Rochester.

I’m happy to say we accomplished all of them.

We walked miles all over the west end of Aberdeen and the villages to the west along the A93. We decided that Peterculter was a nice place but probably a bit too far for what we want. While we weren’t fans of Cults when we first arrived, it did grow on us. The discovery of the Deeside Way means that it’s only a 30 minute walk or 15 minute bike ride to RGU which makes the village more appealing – although it is still pretty pricey. We also wandered all over the west end from Hazelhead Park to Duthie Park and from the River Dee to Woodend Hospital. We really like the area around Mannofield Church as well as around Johnston Gardens. We investigated every 3-4 bedroom, 2 bath, garage and garden house in those areas and saw a few that would work but we know they won’t be available when we are ready to move. However, finding “the” house was not the goal; knowing where to look for a house was and we succeeded there. We also learned what money will buy. We had originally hoped to be able to pay cash and not have to carry a mortgage but that would mean that we’d need to buy something that needed a LOT of work (which is still money I suppose) and really isn’t want we want.

It was also key for me to meet with my new colleagues and dean at the University. While I had many Teams chats with most of them, we hadn’t actually met in person yet. I confess that I was just a tad nervous that I had decided to pick up and move overseas based on discussions with people in little boxes on my computer screen but I needn’t have worried. We got along famously and had some great discussions about what courses would be best for me to teach (Data Governance and Ethics? Yes Please!) and how various things work in the department. I got to tour several buildings with the promise that I will indeed get lost (as in fact we did during the tour!) and saw where my cubicle is likely to be. Yup, for the first time in my career, I’m a cubical dweller! One of the things that I am looking forward to initially in this position is not being in charge of ANYTHING! Like Frank and his “retirement”, I don’t think that will last long but it will be nice to be able to focus on teaching for a bit and worry about taking on additional responsibilities later. (Yes, depending on the responsibilities I may get an office. 😁)

And finally, we wanted to use the fortnight away to make sure the house stayed in pristine condition while it was put on the market. All vestiges of the dog had been transferred to Boston with him and it was easy to make sure that the staging stayed in place if we weren’t there. So the house was officially listed on September 2 with showings starting on the 6th after Labor Day and offers due on September 12. The cunning plan worked! We got multiple offers including one for cash, over asking price, with no contingencies. Once the lawyers do their thing, we’ll have some money to use as a basis for buying our house – probably in the spring. The economist in me wants to wait until the inflation figures drop to meet expectations so that we aren’t stuck with nominal rates that are higher than fundamentals would predict. (Okay real economists, tell me how that isn’t a thing…. 😂)

So phase 1 of the BOM (Big Overseas Move) Plan is complete. Now we move on to Phase 2: Implementation. It’s time to get the visa sorted, get the moving arranged, and start getting rid of things that aren’t going with us – which is really everything. Stay tuned!

Pretending to be normal

Okay I know that Frank and I pretend to be normal most days but things have now reached their illogical conclusion.  We have spent what seems like months packing – okay Frank has – but we kept trying to pretend that we were just living in our house like normal.  All that went out the window today.  We are now T-3 days until closing and we can’t just box up the stuff we don’t feel like using over the next few days.  It’s time to get serious.

And serious is where we are.  The bathrooms have been packed and cleaned out.  One bed is in parts and another is slated for disassembly tomorrow. The final files have been placed in a box and my desk is also ready to be taken apart. After spending all day in the most miserable heat on Saturday and Sunday  wrapping and taping and running to the Uhaul store for more boxes so we could wrap and tape some more, we had a brief respite yesterday that came in the guise of a cookout with friends.  It was a lovely break where we pretended everything was normal – even if we did spend way more time trying to explain Wegmans than could ever be considered normal for KC! Even on departure, we said “See you later” rather than “Goodbye” cuz it felt more normal and delayed the tears at least for a short time.

So now we are out of social engagements, out of time, and out of excuses.  Today the kitchen had to be packed.  Still trying to use up as much food as possible, we started with a homemade quiche Lorraine (cuz that’s normal!) and then as another impossibly hot day began in earnest, we did a trial run for the drive to NY and packed up the cars exactly as it will be when we pull out of the driveway for the last time:  suitcases for vacation, air bed, kitchen necessities, dog crate and bedding, and an inordinate number of boxes of booze. Hmmm….

Then everything that was left in the house got packed.  Well mostly.  I can’t believe how much stuff was hidden in the kitchen cupboards!  Frank had packed a great deal of it already but left out dishes and glasses and pans and appliances we are still using.  All of it had to find it’s way into some kind of container.  It’s time to stop pretending that we live here and that we’ll actually cook anything.  (Foreshadowing:  the grill isn’t packed yet.  🙂 )

Away went the bread machine, Kitchenaid mixer, toaster oven, frying pans, cookie sheets, bundt pans (really, who makes bundt cakes anymore!), knives, cutlery, plates, bowls, mugs, and anything that was hidden in a nook or cranny in the kitchen.  When that got boring, we’d wander into the living room and take apart lamps and clocks.  At one point Frank noted that by packing all the lamps, we would now have no light in the living room.  I looked around at the bare walls, stacks of boxes, and huddles of misplaced furniture and pointed out that the room wasn’t usable anyway.  After hours of packing, we were still reflexively trying to be normal and act like we would actually use that room again.

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All our kitchen “necessities” less the plastic wine glasses already in use.

Six hours and close to a dozen boxes later, we called it a day and rescued the cargo from the steaming hot cars.  Our dry run netted us the realization that you never have as many boxes as you need and there are always things that suddenly appear after the last box is closed.  I have officially designated one of the rubbermaid tubs from the garage the “flotsam and jetsam” box for the plethora of misplaced items which will suddenly appear when the movers arrive.  We are now squatters in what will be someone else’s house in 3 days with only the bare necessities for eating the inevitable take out. For one last night though we’ll pretend just a little and cook our KC strips on the grill. And eat them off of paper plates.  That seems almost normal.

A week in real estate

What a week we’ve had.  We bought and sold a house within the stretch  of 6 days! A whirlwind trip to Rochester results in offers on two houses, one successful.  We return to a few days of crazy preparation on the current house to have an accepted offer in less than 36 hours on the market!  Let me explain.  (No there is too much. Let me sum up.  🙂 )

While shopping for a house and contemplating what is important to us (see previous post), we found a house that wasn’t quite perfect but checked most of our boxes: relatively new, (slightly) bigger kitchen, soaking tub in the master bath (jacuzzi actually), fitted albeit compact closets in the master bedroom, an open “great room” off the kitchen, formal dining room, 3 car garage and lovely big backyard with patio.  It was just missing the formal living room.  The basement was unfinished but had potential for an updated man cave (Frank misses his pool table) and workout area.  It would take some work but it was doable.  It was in a slightly different area than we were originally looking (Webster versus Pittsford/Fairport) but had a reasonable commute for me and was close to Wegmans!  If you haven’t experience Wegmans, I feel sorry for you.  It is one of the things we are most looking forward to in our move.  And good wineries.  And mountains.  Oh, and my new awesome job.  Now we were hoping we had found a home to look forward too as well.

After spending Friday afternoon and all day Saturday traipsing around 14 houses, we made a second stop to the favored one on Sunday morning.  Then on Sunday afternoon we made a pretty common lowball opening offer: $12K under asking.  The current owners had only been in the house for 8 months and had priced it at $30K more than they had paid for it.  I’m all for free market commerce but that seems like a high return for a coat of paint and some new hardwoods.  They took several hours to respond to the offer – the agent said she couldn’t get a hold of them until about 8pm but it turns out that they had two more showings they were waiting for.  They countered right in the middle, splitting the difference between our offer and asking.  Unfortunately for them, Frank “Mr. Antsy Pants” couldn’t just sit and wait for their response and took to the online real estate sites where he found another house that had just been listed that day (who lists on a Sunday afternoon?) that seemed to check ALL the boxes.  We hastily made arrangements to see that house on Sunday night.

Yes, we were the obnoxious people who wanted to scope out a house at 7pm on a Sunday when the owner had to be there because of a sick child who couldn’t be spirited away on our whim.  Boy am I glad that Frank has no patience!  This house has (nearly) everything we could want. Certainly everything the other house had but with a formal living room, his and her walk in closets, a larger unfinished basement with taller ceilings and roughing for plumbing, on the end of a cul-de-sac.  It’s only 5 years old – newer than the previous house by 10 years – and nearly the same price! What is missing is the patio/deck but with an acre of land, we’ll have plenty of space to build one! (And yes, we know that one room requires some new paint.  I love most of the colors but pink and brown are not our thing!)

And with a deadline on the counter for the first house looming, we made an offer on the second house.  Since we were all convinced it was grossly underpriced, we didn’t want to start with the lowball offer so we went $5K under and it was accepted!  We flew home Monday with the comfort of knowing we had someplace to live. It’s roughly a 30 minute commute for me which is a little longer than what I was hoping for but still completely reasonable.  The other downside is that it is 15 minutes from Wegmans rather than 5 but we’ll learn to live with that.

Tuesday morning started the real chaos.  I went to work on the mortgage paperwork and Frank worked to finalize everything we needed to show our house.  Most of the interior paintwork was done while we were gone so there were only a few tidbits to be fixed on Tuesday and then all the furniture replaced in the staging arrangement.  Wednesday the photographer came and took all the amazing photos we needed to have people love our house.  While that was happening, Frank was frantically rolling out sod in the backyard to finally cover all the dirt that was still exposed from the construction of the garage last year.  Thursday had a flurry of paperwork and approvals and the listing went live on Friday around noon.

Now the tables were turned.  Whereas the previous week, we had been kicking people out of their homes so we could wander through their lives, it was now our turn.  Four showings on Friday afternoon meant that Frank and Buddy had to drive around KC until I got off work and we could grab some dinner.  Luckily it was a cool cloudy day so Buddy could hang out in the car while we ate.  The texts came in all through dinner setting up showings for Saturday so it was clear we had to be scarce from 10am through 3pm. So we ran as many errands as we could think of: going to the farthest Whole Foods, then heading back into town for Record Store day, grabbing lunch out in the burbs again near where I was headed for my 90 minute massage (heaven!) while Frank and Buddy toured various parking lots and did more driving.

Later that afternoon, we got the standard lowball offer – $15K under asking – and countered with $5K under which was immediately accepted.  And like that, we are done.  There is still the inspection to deal with which I think will be more challenging than the one we had on the 5 year old home. But for now we can stop hiding the toaster oven in the basement and can actually cook dinner without worrying about the smell of lasagna “messing up” the curb appeal. We still have the challenges of arranging movers around staggered closing dates and trying to squeeze a visit to the family in Scotland as well. But for now we have a period of relative calm to appreciate how lucky we are, especially given our last foray into the housing market, and plan for all the fun things that come with a new home.

 

 

 

And finally, sell your house

It took nearly six months, two sets of realtors, hundreds of emails, and thousands of dollars but at last we are no longer property owners in Virginia. Some people are aware of the comedy of errors/fiasco/disaster that our journey has been but I share more generally as a form of therapy.

Sold!

Back in February, we received a typical marketing letter from a local realtor stating that they had clients who were interested in a house in our neighborhood and if we had ever considered selling then they would love to hear from us. We knew then that there was a small chance of relocation but even if that wasn’t an issue, we had already decided that as empty nesters we certainly didn’t need 5 bedrooms and 3.5 baths. So we investigated. We met with the sender of the letter* who asserted that he had two potential buyers lined up for our neighborhood and then shared all kinds of statistics on how successful his brokerage is. We let him know that we had no firm date for moving as our destination was still in question. We had him come by and view the house which he declared to be like a “show house” and would be able to command top dollar. We were worried that our lack of neutral palette would be a problem but since we had brought in a color consultant and had things professionally designed, it was declared a strength not a weakness. Given that we had bought the house at nearly the height of the market (June 2006), we had grave concerns about how much we would lose by selling when the housing market hadn’t quite fully recovered. (The downside to being an economist is that you tend to pay attention to such things which can sometimes be depressing.) We met again to discuss details and he suggested a marketing strategy that he thought would work to basically sell the house for what we paid for it 8 years prior. It was a good sales pitch; we bought it and signed on the dotted line. The fact that it took 3 rounds of back and forth to get the listing agreement right should have been a clue where things would head. We wanted several changes that took a great deal of effort to get put into the contract correctly. Primary was that we didn’t want to have the listing agreement go beyond the end of June. That would give them just over 90 days to sell our house. Their original date in the contract was August 2015! Who signs a listing agreement for more than a year!!!

Continue reading →

Too many trees?

That is apparently the latest reason we’ve gotten why buyers aren’t interested in our house.  It has too many trees.  Really?  What did you expect for a home advertised as having a “wooded lot”.

We love our current house; it’s been home for 8 years and has hosted track sleepovers, theater cast parties, fondue nights, massive barbeques, whiskey tastings, pool tournaments and countless smaller events that make it hard to think of moving on.  But we will and we will build new memories in our new house.  I’d prefer to concentrate on that part than worry about when we aren’t going to own two houses.

The real estate purchase process is an odd beast.  Having been on both sides of it – simultaneously – I wonder if I’m a lousy buyer or a lousy seller.  When we went to Kansas City to buy a house, we visited 16 houses in 2 days, an exhausting and thrilling time that resulted in a contract on our new house.  We also saw houses that weren’t the right fit so I understand that.  We saw houses with rooms that you had to walk through to get to other rooms, master bedrooms without a private bath, full bathrooms that opened off the kitchen, yards that were completely decked over with no grass, and others that had peccadilloes that made them not be the perfect house for us.  I do recall having thoughts like “yard needs work” and “that room will need to be painted” as mental notes of changes that we would make rather than reasons not to buy the house.  And yes there were houses that would just require more TLC than we were willing to do no matter what the price. We told our realtor these things and expected her to pass them along to the seller.

Which is why I’m wondering about some of the “feedback” we are hearing on our house.  When we moved in the entire house was a either pale yellow or pale peach.  Ugh.  But we waited a year to decide what we wanted to do with it then hired a color consultant who created a beautiful color palate for us.  This resulted in a butterscotch hallway, blue kitchen, stone living room and family room on the first floor.  All well coordinated and beautifully painted.

entrance livingroom Master

We understood that the red sitting room, dill pickle green bathroom and seafoam bedroom may not be to everyone’s liking.  But most people never mentioned color.  In fact, we got very little feed back from our realtors other than “not the right fit” (that’s another rant for another day).  When we did get suggestions – landscaping is rough – we fixed it.  Some were questionable (well the trash cans are at the side of the house and that ruins the curb appeal.  WTF?) but we fixed it anyway. Then after more than 2 months on the market and watching other houses in the neighborhood being sold quickly by the same realtor, the suggestion that we needed to be more neutral was made.  (Doing yoga breathing to keep temper at bay.)

redsittingroombluekitchen picklebathroom

So gone is the blue kitchen, dill pickle green bathroom and red sitting room among others,  Hello beige and white.  Ugh.  Because we still live here, I refuse to lose my butterscotch hallway with the matching original artwork and the seafoam bedroom that I still sleep in. And now we don’t hear about color, landscaping or trash cans.  Now the reason we are given for buyers not liking our house is “Too many trees”.  Sorry, that’s just too damn bad.  I’ll carry two mortgages until we find someone who appreciates trees.

(Photos copyright MRIS and used without permission because it’s my house.)