Skipping Ahead

Finished Living Room

Ever read a story, article, or book where you just wanted the writer to get on with it.  I′ve read a few in recent months.  It was a bit like fingernails scraping across the chalkboard.  Peddling through the drivel to get to the treasure.  One novel I couldn′t even finish.

That′s sort of how I feel about this blog.  Like I′m plodding along.  Trying to wade through the bog of events to get to the important stuff.  So I′ve decided to take a different approach.

Yes there were some interesting moments during the rehabbing process.  We had trouble with the crew.  Tempers flared.  Tools broke.  Supplies ran low.  I had a meltdown … or two.  But I realize now, my heart isn′t in the retelling of these incidents; the detailing of them would bore both you and me.

That′s not to say they won’t come up.  And when and if they do, I hope to expound on them appropriately.

For now, I′d like to concentrate on what happened in April of 2010.

Back to the beginning….

Kitchen - (Remember when there was a toilet in there)

Best to do a little background here.  If you′re just tuning in or don′t happen to remember, we acquired this house at the end of June 2008.

Yeah, I know.

We completed the project exactly two months later.  Not a bad turnaround, but it was a month over our time line.  We had intended to finish it by the end of July.  In doing so, we figured we be perfectly timed for those interested in buying a home before school started.

We consulted a Realtor®, but decided to try For Sale By Owner first.  Bad move.  Had we gone with the Realtor®, who had previously worked with The Investor and knew how he operated, we might have come out smelling like roses.  Actually making a profit.

Now this could have had good and bad consequences.  Yes, we would probably have made money, but we also would have thought we were smarter than we were.  In other words, we might have gone on to invest in another property using the same lame principles – and lost our shirts – or worse!

Please Buy Our Rest Home

I posted on Craig′s List and several other online sites I could advertise for free.

On the advice of The Investor, we also put an ad in the local paper.  We worded it according to The Investor′s specifications, but it somehow came out with “Rest Home” in the text.  The paper eventually corrected their mistake, but it was a costly one.  We missed an entire weekend because of the error.

We laughed it off, joking:  Please buy our Rest Home.  But our window of opportunity to sell slipped away.  Even after a second attempt with a newspaper advertisement (an expensive endeavor at $119 a pop), we’d only had about a dozen people look at it and no serious offers.

We let the online advertisements lapse.  Our “House For Sale” signs at the end of the block kept disappearing.  We’d travel up there once a week to check on things.  But we weren′t aggressive enough to sell it.

Phase II

For months we wrestled with what to do next.  It became increasingly difficult to pay the mortgage on the house and rent on our duplex.

In November, with few other options, we decided to move into the house.  We pulled down the signs and settled in.

Shortly after moving, we had to have the septic system pumped.  Another un-fun expense.

The timing to sell seemed right. Our little money pit was the perfect candidate for buyers looking to cash in on the $8000 tax credit.

In January, we put it back on the market.  I checked out as many free sites as I could.  And we started getting calls.

From the moment we stuck the For Sale by Owner sign in the snow-sodden ground, my job became the house. I spent hours on the Internet researching, learning everything I could about how to sell a house; what I needed to do know if we got a real estate agent.

We rented a storage unit and hauled carloads and carloads of junk to the unit. We even rented a U-haul to take the big stuff. But mostly I cleaned.

I scrubbed, scoured, and disinfected every inch of that house; it almost became a full-time job.

But after several weeks, we had only one candidate actually come to look at it.

She didn′t make an offer, so in the middle of February, with the tax credit expiration looming on the horizon, we decided a Realtor® was the way to go.

Finally Something Worked…

We chose a real estate agent we knew was familiar with the neighborhood as he′d sold several houses on our street.  Plus he liked what we’d done with the place and actually seemed excited about selling it.  A trait lacking in the previous agent.

He put out signs, acquired an MLS, advertised everywhere, and the calls started pouring in.

The Realtor® requested we leave whenever anyone came to see the house.  Now let me say here, trudging out into a wet Missouri winter is anything but fun.

We’d have to bundle ourselves and the dog and take off.   Often just drive around for an hour or two until we were sure everyone had left.

Viggo - enough said

One day I took Viggo to a nearby park and let him run in two feet of snow.  Comical at best.

Our Realtor® was hopeful as we’d had inquiries way above the norm: generally, about one a week.  We averaged three.

On March 19th, after long months of wondering if we’d ever sell the place, we got an offer.  And we jumped onto the next phase of our journey.

Until next time.

Happy Transformation,

Shawn

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