TheBanyanTree: SOLD!

[Margaret R. Kramer]

Our agent called me yesterday morning and our house is SOLD!  Our house was
on the market since June with our first agent, who did nothing except
complain about our dogs.  Then we had a month break when we changed agents.
We used that month to replace the carpet and unfortunately, we put our dogs
down.  I still don’t feel good about that decision, but the dogs were older
and they were having trouble moving, but I feel that we did it about a year
too soon.

Our new agent is an energetic, enthusiastic person who has been in the
business for over 20 years.  He has been very easy to work with and I trust
him completely.  When we first re-listed this house at the end of September,
we didn’t have any lookers.  We had two open houses that no one came to.  We
had sporadic showings.  It was quite discouraging, but I think it was the
market, not the agent.  We went to a few open houses last fall and all the
agents were saying the same thing, the market had just died.

Things picked up in December for us.  Believe or not, we had more showings
in December than we did in October or November.  We almost had an offer, but
they decided our house needed too much work, and they bought another house.
We were disappointed, but we had used that time of anticipation to drive
around and look at some houses.  Our agent said to do our research and we
did learn more about the neighborhoods we would like to live in.

Our agent changed real estate companies in January, which was OK, but our
showings went down and we wondered if that was because he changed companies
or because it was just a slow time.  January new listings in the Twin Cities
metro area were at an all time high and I was gnashing my teeth about all
the additional competition.

All of sudden, the third and fourth weeks of February, we were having
showings all the time.  Poor Axel spent a lot of time in the back seat of
our car.  We went to Pet Smart a lot.  Beagles don’t have a lot of extra fur
to keep them warm and I didn’t want him to freeze in the car.  Our weekends
were disrupted with showings.  And last weekend was crazy, but we got two
offers out of that craziness, and the offer we accepted was $1,000 over our
list price!  I thought that was pretty good in such a buyer’s market.

Through this entire process of selling our home, I’ve kept a database of
houses I would like to look at.  It’s so easy with the internet.  I have 41
houses that are “possibles.”  Ray and I picked out five houses to look at
and I sent the MLS numbers to our agent.  We’ll start looking tomorrow
night.  One of the houses we like has an open house today, so we’ll do our
“research” and go check it out.  And we’ll use the time to drive by our
other houses, too, just so we can look at the neighborhoods and the houses
in broad daylight.

As Ray said yesterday, now we will really have to look at these houses,
rather than just look at them in casual way.  We’ll need to look at the
roofs, the plumbing and heating, the appliances, and the set up.  It’s
serious business now.  Ray will probably take the digital camera and I’ll
take notes, so we don’t get the houses mixed up in our heads.

The other great thing about being SOLD is that we can stop living in a
“staged home.”  It’s OK to have some clutter around again.  I don’t have to
put everything away immediately.  What a relief!  Of course, the house is
going to be a mess as we begin packing, but we’re enjoying it this weekend
before we begin dismantling everything.  We’ll get a dumpster to throw out
the junk.  Ray will begin to bring boxes home from work.

I got our taxes done yesterday, so we can stash the cash for our move.  We’
re going to have Asher and Susan and the boys over for dinner tonight so
they can enjoy the house before we take it apart.

SOLD – I sure like that word.  It’s been one I’ve bee waiting to hear for a
long time.

Margaret R. Kramer
margaretkramer at comcast.net

http://www.bpwmn.org
Business and Professional Women of Minnesota

Be careful of your thoughts, they may become words at any moment.
~Iara Gassen