Friday, March 18, 2011

Hurry Up and Wait....

I'm a planner.  It's what I do. 

So, it really irks me when I know my current lease expires in a month, but I have no idea where I'm going to live. "I should have already planned this! Hurry up and plan!" is what my subconscious screams. But, we are waiting for Father to work things out for all parties involved, and we have no real direction.

The blessing is that we have a house to move into if we need to do that. The downside is that we will really mess up this beautiful house if we move in it. You know what living does to white wall paint...

So, here we sit.  We had another showing on Wednesday afternoon after I wrote the last entry. We got immediate feedback from that one, where the house was ranked a 4 out of 5 with no comment on how the prospective buyer felt about the pricing of the home. When asked if the buyer was interested, the response was "Somewhat." I guess realtors have an eye for this sorta stuff, so my realtor called the buyer's realtor and asked what was up. The other realtor disclosed that the party is interested, and we are on a "final list" for his wife to review when she comes to town. That is encouraging, I guess, except that we have no idea how many other houses are on the "final list." But, it probably means something when a prospective buyer all of a sudden becomes cagey about how well he feels your house is priced.  And so, prayers go up...

There is no way to describe the look on The Boy's face when he answered that realtor's call, only to discover that it wasn't an offer--instead, was only an update of the situation, albeit encouraging. Still, the sale will come. It will come.   

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Life After Restoration

Life after restoration is different.  It is certainly less hectic, but I think it's a little more emotional. We are in the 3rd week of the house on the market, in its current condition, and we've had 3 showings. The single piece of feedback that we received said that the house "presented very well" but that the floor plan was not desirable to that buyer because of a shared upstairs bathroom, which also included the laundry. They felt the house was priced appropriately and had no other criticisms. All in all, I think that is good feedback, considering they didn't say, "Oh they need to fix this or that..."

We are informed of each showing, and it certainly builds expectations. I feel like we are on pins and needles all the time. So, we have gone back to doing some of the things we used to do with fervor but had to give up for a while, like swimming. The Boy also had a serious, stubborn bout of tennis elbow for the past 1 year, which required 3 separate physician interventions. It seems to be finally improving, and he has taken back up weight training in a very minimized capacity for now. This past Sunday, we went to the house for 2 hours to dust and sweep and get it ready for the noon showing, then we came back to town and stared at each other, as if to say, "What do we do now?"  So, we saw a movie, The King's Speech, with Colin Firth.  I highly recommend it.

As I do some preliminary searching today, I note that 4 other properties have popped up for sale in the Forest in the past week.  Here is the situation:


Only the properties circled in the center are truly equivalent to mine (and, actually, only 1 of those is). The two in the upper left are along the Palmer Divide (pardon my misspelling in the snippet!), and the Divide is a Blustery Hell.  It's high, cold, and gets a ton of snow because it's at the point where the high plains abut the forest. It takes a special person to want to live there, and it's even further out from the Springs than our house.

The two properties on the far right are on the plains, no trees at all on the lots. These lots are less valuable. Also quite cold out there.  (OK, as I'm writing this, I realize I should just write "cold everywhere.")


Here is the realtor.com URL for our property.

Here are URLs for some of the other competitors:
House 1
House 2

My only competitor is here.

Here are a couple of "sort-of" competitors:
House 3
House 4

Here is a beautiful property--one of the two on the Palmer Divide. I think it's lovely, but I'd never live there.

On a happy note, I notice that a couple of the houses are now removed from realtor.com, presumably because they sold. I think they were on the site for a couple of months. As there are really no other options, I suppose we will persevere (I sound encouraged, huh?).

On the happiest note, The Boy and I have been together for 1 year, next Monday. I remember my dad telling me, "He's nice to you now, and it's charming.  If he's that nice to you in a year, it's character."