We decided last year that we wanted to put our house up for sale this spring. Mainly because we are running out of space fast and we thought it would be a good idea to capture on the good rates and the lower home prices. Well.... little did we know what we had in store for us. First we had to get rid of the rest of the knob and tube wiring in our home, which we did last fall. That was such a pain and I didn't even have to do any of the labor for it. We actually lucked out in that area because Tim and his dad were able to use a retired electrician for guidance and they did most of the work themselves, which saved us a TON of money! That was good.
Then we talked with my Grandpa, who is our realtor, and set up a time to sign some papers and the real chaos began. We met with him and our house was on the market by March 5th... in between now and then, which has been exactly a month has been extremely stressful on our entire family. First of all, we've had to deal with 'uncluttering' our home to make it more appealing for buyer's when they come to see it. That task alone was frustrating because I'm very pregnant right now and most heavy lifting was out of the question. Thank goodness Tim's dad is retired now and has been able to help Tim as much as he has. I developed a cleaning ritual each day and did a pretty good job of keeping our house clean so that it would be available for showings whenever. Well about 2 weeks after our house was listed on the market we got our first offer- EXCITING!!! But the buyer's completely low balled us and then asked for closing costs. We countered back with an amount we didn't expect them to accept, BUT THEY DID!!
From that point on the madness increased ten fold. The inspection was a week later and we had to prepare for that by fixing last minute things, but mainly scraping, prepping, and painting the outside of the house. That was a nightmare. First, I almost fell off a ladder cause I insisted on helping Tim tape the windows outside. Then because we had to finish painting on Sunday after church. The inspection came back with reasonable requests from the buyer, but still stuff that costs more mulah. We had to fix a plumbing issue and the hot water tank, which we ended up having to get a professional in for costing us a new hot water tank adding up to over $700!!! It was a good thing that their inspector flagged it because it turns out that the previous homeowners were extremely stupid. They installed in incorrectly and could have killed us all with carbon monoxide poisoning!!!
Then came the appraisal and we were told once again to fix more on the house. This time they found a few other spots we had missed with peeling paint- that's a pretty easy fix. Just scrape and paint if only the weather would cooperate with us here. Then comes the harder part- fix the earth to wood contact on the back and front decks. This has to be done so that the house is FHA compliant for the buyer's loan. And then the biggest factor of the appraisal- the house has to appraise for what the buyer's are giving us or else we have to lower our price- YIKES!!!
As of right now we're waiting on the results from the appraisal and are praying lots. I don't think that I could go through this again with another set of buyers, especially with Hannah making her arrival in less than 2 months now. I just pray that this is meant to happen now. Wish us luck and I'll have to do a better job of updating on this crazy situation.
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