Closed

On Wednesday afternoon--during our lunch hour, actually--we vacuumed and we scrubbed. And then we walked out of this place for the very last time.

It was our first home together. It was the place we came home to the day we got married. In it, we decorated a nursery in preparation for a beautiful baby. And then we brought Nora home to this small, cozy space.

But honestly, it wasn't sad to leave it. We moved on with our lives--welcomed a new beginning, if you will--a long time ago. If you've been following this saga, you know that when we moved last summer, we weren't able to sell our old condo. We had to rent it out, which was fine, but not something that we really wanted to do. But eight months later, our friends/tenants moved out, and 18 days after that--on this past Thursday afternoon--the buyer signed the papers that made her the new owner.

We really couldn't have asked for it to work out any better, except if we had actually sold it last year! Otherwise, the timing seemed serendipitous. Needless to say, to get rid of this place is a huge relief--emotionally, physically, mentally and financially.

I almost can't even believe it's really over. I think it'll take me some time to process completely.

Celebration is in order!

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Glimpse

I'm alive!

Though some days, I've questioned that--the late nights up working on the house have resulted in some zombie-like mornings, that's for sure.

We're work-work-working away, trying to get as much done as possible so we can get settled and, you know, host a first birthday party. (We're CRAZY.)

What's important to know is that we're officially moved into the house. We got a crew together on Saturday and moved all of the big stuff, and started sleeping at the house that night. But we're not at all settled, that's for sure. So much work to be done, so much unpacking to do... I honestly try not to think about the entire scope of things, because then I get overwhelmed.

Anyway, all of this + no internet access = I don't have much time for a post to tell you all about what we're working on. Plus, it'll be more fun to show you and give more details when we have "before" AND "after" shots to share--so I'll just leave you with a few pics to give you a glimpse into our lives these days! Some of these are from the new house, some are from the mayhem that became the condo during the packing stages. Oh, and note--these are all taken with our point-and-shoot. Our DSLR hasn't even made it out of the bag in like a week. (SAD!)

Enjoy!

As you can see, we are dealing with some BEAUTIFUL carpet. And by "dealing," I mean RIPPING THAT SHIT OUT.It's really satisfying to take a knife to ugly carpet. I'm just sayin'.

Outdated style abounds. We've been removing wallpaper in our kitchen. We had contests about who could rip off the largest pieces without it tearing.

(I won.)

Who doesn't love a fresh coat of paint when they move into a place? We're no different--but trying to paint the entire house has been a challenge, to say the least. We have exactly *ONE* room done, and that is Nora's. This pic is of our living room. We have one coat done, but need to do a second one + priming and painting the trim. Ick.

Back at the condo... Moving day.

The moving crew. Love every single one of 'em!

And, of course, we had to end with a quick shot of our sweet girl playing in her new front yard.

More to come!

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The Last Night

Tonight is our last night in our condo--the place we have called home for six years, one month, and 19 days.

I'd be lying if I said it wasn't really sad to pack up all of our stuff. I'd also be lying if I said I didn't shed a few tears as I got Nora ready for bed tonight.

It's just a bittersweet life event, I suppose.

Added to the stress is that we still have no answers about our condo. The potential buyer who came through twice early last week contacted us on Monday, asking us to provide measurements for some of the rooms in our place. Seemed like a positive thing, because if she was wondering about measurements, she was trying to picture her life here in the condo. It at least meant we certainly weren't out of the running yet.

But since then, nothing. Apparently she's not in any hurry to make a decision.

We've had little luck with potential tenants as well. The one who we thought was a sure thing a few weeks ago is still dragging her heels. Any new ones we've met have not amounted in anything, either.

It's making us nervous.

We are meeting with another person on Sunday, and I have my fingers crossed SO HARD. It'll be the first person to see the place vacant, so I guess we'll see if that's an advantage or disadvantage.

But for now, I'm trying to concentrate on the positive. Today, I *finally* got some of the painting done in Nora's room. And even though it's not going to be finished for another few days at least, seeing the color start to come alive on her walls made it feel just a little bit like home.

I have so much I want to share (including PHOTOS!), but seriously no time to do it right now. I hope you'll all bear with me during this period of my life, since it is such a huge adjustment--I'd argue that this transition is much more difficult on me than it was to have a newborn baby!

To make blogging matters even more difficult, we're not going to have internet service at our house until August 30th (thanks for nothin', Time Warner). Soooo... hopefully I'll have a few minutes during a couple of lunch breaks to type up a few quick updates for y'all within the next 10 days. But we shall see.

I appreciate all of the well wishes everyone has been sending our way over the last several weeks and months, and I don't want to be greedy, so I won't ask for them again. I do hope, however, that I'm able to share good news with you very soon.

Hopefully very, very soon.

Life is overwhelming right now. Truly overwhelming. And guess what? We have a certain little lady's FIRST BIRTHDAY PARTY(!!!) in three weeks. Holy cow. So, stay tuned for that as well.

Here I am, signing out from the condo for the very last time...

I'll be back!

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Unsettled

We finally got into our new house on Friday evening.

And after working tirelessly the entire weekend, trying to do as much as possible in too short a period of time, we are back in our condo for one more week. And instead of being ridiculously excited about it all, I am feeling...

...unsettled.

I am sore. From the muscles in my head and neck, all the way down to my toes. Carpet ripping, wallpaper stripping, ceiling painting, paint rolling and cutting in... it's exhausting. All of that work, and we still have MILES to go. In all reality, the house is nowhere near ready to move in. But we sort of have to, given that we can't get much done until we do. The issue we have is that Nora's bedtime is so early that we can't get over to the house to do anything during the week. And to become strictly weekend warriors would mean that it would take FOREVER for us to finish everything. At least, if we're living there, we'll be able to do things like painting after Nora is in bed each night.

So, this week, we're preparing to pick up and move from a perfectly good, remodeled, clean, lovely little condo into a bigger, creaky, messy, torn apart house. We're leaving "home" for... not home. It just feels like it's going to take forever to make this new place ours.

Is it normal to feel like this? For months, we've been discussing the thousands of reasons why it is such a good thing that we are moving. We've talked about the hundreds of things that we will not miss.

Now, I find myself feeling incredibly sad about leaving. I am feeling nostalgic, and catch myself thinking things like, "This is our last Sunday night in this condo. We will never again enjoy a weekend here." I think about how this is the only home that Nora has ever known, how she's comfortable here and knows it's her house. And how we'll be taking her away from it forever. AND IT MAKES ME WANT TO CRY. I swear, tears are welling up in my eyes as I type it this very minute.

Adding to the unsettling feelings is the fact that we still do not have a resolution for the condo. Still no word from the (seemingly promising) buyers who came through the past few weeks, so we're assuming nothing is going to happen there. And now the tenant who we thought was a sure thing is being a little wishy-washy with us, so we're not feeling very confident about that, either.

So, I prepare to pack. To leave comfort and head to a place that still feels like someone else's house.

I hope it's going to start feeling like home soon.

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House Drama

Clearly, I have a one-track mind this week. Sorry if you're bored with my house buying/selling posts. At the very least, I should move on to bitching about house redecorating/renovating soon, if that makes you feel any better.

Sadly, I don't have any news to report regarding the prospective buyer who came through here for a second look last night. Apparently, she still hasn't made her decision between our place and the other one she had placed in her "top two." Our realtor says that most buyers aren't moving very quickly in this market, so I guess we just have to be patient. Kind of difficult to do when you're running out of time!

Earlier tonight, I spoke to the woman who is interested in renting, and now she is throwing a curve ball into the situation--she is contemplating buying, too! This could obviously be a good thing, it could end up being nothing, or it could be a bad thing. The way we see it, this could turn out one of three ways: 1) She could end up buying our condo, which would be amazing (obviously). 2) She could end up ditching the idea of buying and rent, like she originally planned. Or 3) She could decide she wants to buy, but not buy from us, which would suck (obviously). Needless to say, until she wraps her head around what she's going to do, we're in a holding pattern there, too.

Add on top of all of this a wild card... another prospective buyer came through here a week ago with our old realtor, but said it would be a few weeks before she made a decision. We don't expect to hear from her again, but I guess you never know.

ALL OF THIS SUSPENSE IS KILLING ME.

Now, on the buying side... we learned today just how much we truly hate our sellers.

I got a call today from our realtor, saying that she had heard from the sellers' realtor with some bad news. "He says the sellers can't be out of the house until probably 5:00 p.m. Friday," she tells me.

What the WHAT?

We're closing at 1:00 p.m. tomorrow (Thursday), mind you. They close on their new place immediately afterward, at 2:00 p.m.

I called our attorney immediately, and upon hearing this, she got angry on our behalf and said that there is no reason why they can't be out of the house tomorrow. She said that if they had planned properly, they would have their stuff all packed up before going to closing, at which point they receive the keys to their new place and can take the stuff over right away. She said she was going to call the sellers' attorney to find out what the deal is.

What do we end up finding out? The stupid sellers scheduled the moving truck for Friday morning. You know, a good 18 hours after the house is OURS. Apparently they didn't realize that when you close on the sale, THE HOUSE IS NO LONGER YOURS. What kills us is that we were originally supposed to close today (Wednesday). And they didn't schedule movers until Friday? Who the hell are these people?

After a lot of back and forth, ("We can't be out until Friday evening." "You WILL be out by noon.") yada yada yada, it has been determined that we will be entering into a post-possession agreement with the sellers during which they will be paying us "rent" for every day that they continue to occupy the damn house. So, at the very least, they will owe us for Thursday-Friday. If they're not out by noon on Friday (our specified deadline), they will owe us for ANOTHER day. In addition, they need to put a lovely chunk of cash into an escrow account at our attorney's office until we are able to get in there for our final walk-through.

Hopefully this encourages them to haul ass.

Apparently this is not an unusual situation, but our attorney said that it kills her every.single.time. People just assume that they can stay in the house after closing. I cannot comprehend this way of thinking AT ALL.

Our sellers have been less than stellar to work with throughout this entire process, so we're certainly not in any hurry to do them any favors. And I'm sure we're not going to be on the top of their "nice list," either, so I'm sure we can expect the house to be left in less-than-ideal condition. Oh well, it's not like we weren't going to get in there and scrub it from top to bottom anyway.

We better have keys to our house on Friday. I'm just sayin'.

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No Word.

The repeat showing was at 6:00 p.m. tonight. It was another hectic day at work, and we rushed home to do a last-minute pick-up of the house before hustling out the door just prior to the appointment.

We went to Home Depot to pick up a few painting supplies we need for the new house.

By the time we returned, the prospective buyer was gone, and unfortunately, we haven't heard a thing since then.

We're not sure if that's a good thing, or a bad thing.

Yesterday, when they left after the first showing, they called our realtor right away, saying that while our place was beautiful, they were "just starting the search" and "not ready to buy." And then six hours later, we found out that things had apparently changed, and we were now in the "top 2."

And now, we know nothing more.

Please continue to send positive vibes our way (we certainly appreciate all of your kind thoughts and words so far!). We're just anxious to have some kind of an answer either way.

Our realtor says that like most buyers, they probably just want to talk it through and then sleep on it, and he'll follow up in the morning. Until then, we are on pins and needles. C'mon, baby.

COME ON.

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Juggling

There are so many balls up in the air in our lives right now. It'll be interesting to see where they all land when this is said and done.

First off, I need to selfishly request good thoughts and prayers. I'll back up a second and say that we re-listed our house with a new realtor on Friday. Yesterday, we got a call from him saying that we had a showing scheduled for 10:30 this morning. It was encouraging, sure, but we've had our fair share of showings, and none have ever resulted anything, so we kept realistic expectations.

I left work and got Tessa out of the house, then drove down the street a little bit and just sat in the car with my phone while I waited for the showing to be over. I saw the realtor and the woman go in, then come back out 20 minutes later. Our realtor soon called me (before I even got back into the house) to tell me that he had received a call from the buyer's realtor, and while the place showed beautifully and it was "one of the best we've seen," she is just starting her search and not ready to buy yet.

Everything we've heard before. What a drag.

Around 5:00 p.m., though, I got another call from our realtor. I thought maybe it would be for another showing, but to my surprise, he said that the woman from this morning wants to come back tomorrow with her adult daughter. He said he was told we are in the "top two," and she just wants her daughter's opinion on each of them. We also found out she is a noncontingent buyer.

Talk about a turn of events! I asked our realtor what he thought had changed in the six hours since we had last heard from her, and he said that he assumed they had been to see other comparable properties and saw that most of them in this price range are in crap shape, so it made her realize that perhaps she should jump on the ones that are great. Hmm. I guess we'll see.

Now, we're anxious to pull out all of the stops to convince this lady that OUR property is the one she wants! How amazing would it be, after more than six months of this crap, to sell just days before closing on our new house? I'm not counting on it, of course, but it's hard not to get our hopes up a little. This is our first repeat appointment!

So, that's where the thoughts and prayers come in. Please cross all appropriate appendages for us that this is what we've been waiting for? It would be much appreciated!

In the meantime, we're also waiting on an application from a potential tenant that we met with on Saturday morning. She LOVES the place and really wants it, but we've been taking our time working with her because we're trying to buy ourselves some more time to sell. I told her to take her time with the application--she's a great possibility (assuming her credit comes back OK), but we'd still love to sell, of course. A *third* possibility right now--we have some friends who are interested in possibly renting from us as well. It's a long story, but they actually responded to our Craigslist ad, not knowing it was us. How funny is that?

Anyway, it's great to have activity around our place, that's for sure. We're hoping that SOMETHING positive comes from all of this. While the interest in it is comforting, it's still unsettling to not yet know how this is all going to end.

Shifting gears to our new house... We found out on Friday that we are officially cleared to close. This morning, when I spoke to our attorney, we scheduled closing for Wednesday, which had been the plan all along. A few hours later, however, I got another call saying that the sellers aren't able to close on their new place until Thursday, and won't be able to move out--so WE can't close until Thursday now, either. Not entirely unusual, I'm told, but damn, this sucks. We're not convinced that they're going to be able to be out on Thursday, either--even if we *do* close! Obviously, that's all up in the air right now. We won't really know until later this week, I guess. I took a half day off from work on Friday to spend the afternoon painting, and I'm going to pissed if I can't even get in there!

Between the attorney, realtors, and insurance people, I spent probably 2+ hours on the phone today. Ugh! The good news is that after three different quotes, we ended up saving more than 50% off of the original homeowner's insurance quote we received. It certainly paid to call around!

That is the latest around these parts. Not sure when we're going to be able to go into our new house. Not sure if we'll be signing a lease with a tenant, or working with an offer. But we sure do hope for the latter. Keep us in your thoughts tomorrow, and we'll update when we can. It's a start to another crazy week; how is it only Monday??

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Pack Knack

As our closing date for our new house is approaching, I've come to realize something a little startling: We have no idea how to pack.

I mean, sure. Throw things in a box, throw crap in the car/van/truck, take it to new house. It doesn't sound complicated, which is probably why I've never really put much thought into it before. But now that it is upon us, we don't really know where to start. It's one of those things that is so overwhelming, it's paralyzing.

I think back to all of the times that we've moved--to/from college four years in a row. And, well, when we moved into this condo six years ago. All of those times, we weren't moving much, since we were really only moving ONE ROOM worth of stuff for each of us.

Six years later, we've accumulated all of the things that make a place a true home. A couch, dishes, kitchen gadgets and appliances, dining room furniture, TV stand with large flat-screen TV, a whole set of baby furniture, tools, bikes, and it goes on and on and on. Needless to say, it's a bit more complicated this time around.

I'm left wondering how far in advance we should be packing things up. What we should pack up first. What we should leave for last minute on moving day. What size U-Haul we should reserve. How we protect big things (dining room table and chairs, for instance) from getting damaged. I'm thinking there should probably be a plan in place. If we wing it, I'm afraid the move will take FOREVER.

How does this work? Is there a proven method to this madness?

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End of My Rope

On Saturday, I suddenly realized I hadn't blogged since last Tuesday. Prior to that, I hadn't thought about it in days. Not once.

It was just one of those weeks.

On Thursday, I pulled into the driveway after picking up Nora from daycare. Michael met me at my car, saying, "It's 95 degrees in the house." He wasn't kidding. It was literally 95 degrees inside. Our central air conditioner decided to die on the hottest day of the year. We set a record high of 98 degrees, with a heat index of 113.

We immediately packed up and got the hell out of here, retreating to my mom's house for the night. Thankfully, we had a home buyer's warranty taken out on place, which covers anyone who buys our property for up to a year--and covers us while we are on the market. We were able to place a claim through that insurance company, and a serviceman came out on Friday morning and fixed the A/C. Even with the air working, it took several hours for the house to cool down again, so I spent the day working from home and cleaning in lower-90 and upper-80 degree indoor temps. I'm not going to lie; it was unpleasant.

We had another wedding on Saturday. We bought 19 gallons of paint for the new house at the Sherwin Williams 40% off sale. We visited with family on Sunday.

At the back of our minds during all of these everyday life occurrences, we were thinking about what the hell we're going to do about our condo (like always). Which, as you have probably assumed by now, has still not sold. We are just a few days shy of six months on the market. This is so far from our ideal scenario, I'm almost not even sure where our minds were when we originally started this nightmare.

We've had countless conversations, and we're ambivalent. We should find a tenant. No, we don't want to rent it out. We should drop the price drastically to make a last-ditch effort to sell. No, we should wait a few years to see if the market rebounds and we can sell for a better price.

In all honesty, it's sort of a lose-lose situation for us.

We don't want to be landlords. We wouldn't make any money by doing so. We'd have to worry about things breaking (mainly our ancient furnace and air conditioning), in not one house, but two. We spent a lot of time and money fixing this place up. We put in new carpet last summer, and we're afraid a tenant will destroy it.

But we don't want to sell for a rock-bottom price, either.

In the end, I know that we'll be OK. One year, five years, ten years into the future, we're going to be in a better place about this condo. Maybe we'll be landlords and it won't be as bad as we're imagining, and we'll make our money back. Maybe we'll finally sell it, and we'll never look back.

The thing is, I'm at the point where I kinda just don't care. As long as we're not paying two mortgages come October 1st, I am indifferent about how we get there. I just want a resolution. Because unless you have lived for six months (or, God forbid, longer than that) with this kind of weight on your shoulders, you have no idea what kind of toll this amount of stress can take.

What it really all comes down to--at least for me--is that I don't know when to call it quits and give in. I don't know when we should officially accept that we aren't going to sell this place, and turn toward searching for a suitable tenant. Because although I have come to terms with the possibility of renting, I would still much prefer to sell.

Our contract with our current realtor expires next week, and we have plans to re-list with a new realtor. I'm honestly not sure that he'll be able to do anything differently than our old realtor; I'm not sure that our old realtor did anything wrong. It just feels like we have to make a change, given that it's been six months. A new perspective, a breath of fresh air--sort of a fresh start, if nothing else. In my dreams, he comes in here and somehow manages to pull of a miracle and sell this place within a few weeks of it being back on the market. As we've been saying all along, it only takes one.

But if the end result is going to end up being the same--meaning we have to rent it--then we'd honestly rather get someone in here starting September 1st, instead of waiting until October 1st. And if we're going to do that, we need to start looking for a tenant... right now.

We know we could play both angles at this point. We could put a rental ad out there, and we could keep it on the market, and we can see what comes of it. And maybe that's what we'll end up doing, believing all the while that whatever happens to work out--whether it's a buyer or a renter--is what is meant to be. But if we sign a lease with a tenant, I don't know that I'll feel complete peace with it. I can see myself wondering, "What if we had given it just a little more time on the market?"

Thus continues the dilemma.

We are so ready to be done with this shit.

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Needle in a Haystack

We put our place on the market on February 1st.

It's June 27th. We are still searching for a buyer for our home.

I honestly NEVER thought that it would be this hard. When our realtor filled out the contract agreement and put 8/1/11 as the expiration date for our listing, we laughed. We thought there was no way we would come even close to hitting that expiration date. We thought we'd sell in a couple of months, tops.

Well, here we are, just a little more than 30 days away from that expiration, and we haven't had a single showing in five weeks. We've had a few open houses and some traffic through, but we've had a lack of serious buyers. This is frustrating in any selling situation, but it's brutal for us, since you know, we're closing on our new house in August.

We really, really, really do not want to become landlords by renting this place out. Plus, at this point, things are so completely the opposite of how we thought they were going to go that we are nervous that we'd even be able to find a suitable tenant!

So, we sit here, shaking in our boots every single day. Just wishing, hoping, praying, WILLING a buyer to come along. It would be such a huge relief to find one. An enormous weight off our shoulders if we could come across that needle in the haystack.

I keep thinking that surely at some point, things will HAVE to fall into place, right? The power of positive thinking. Have faith. Things work out the way they should. Isn't that what everyone always says?

To try to help things along, we've been doing everything in our power to encourage a sale. We've lowered the price (twice). And now, this past weekend, we moved a bunch of stuff out of the house. We took pictures off the walls. We cleared things out of closets and rooms to make them feel less cramped--especially since we are literally busting at the seams in this place. (Hey, that's why we're moving!)

After we did all that, we went around and took new pictures. We were never happy with the ones that our realtor took on that cold winter's day back in February, with her little point-and-shoot camera. So, we went around and "staged" each room the best we could and took nice shots with our DSLR. They've been updated in the system, and I am crossing my fingers and praying that they are enough to convince someone to schedule an appointment to see this place. And that the visit is enough to make them want to buy it.

Now we continue to wait. As we have waited for nearly five months now.

Every day, hoping we will get that call. It only takes one.

It only takes one.

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Negotiating = Maddening

The past two days, we've been negotiating the terms of our contract with the sellers of our new house, based on the inspection report.

This morning, we got their counter-offer to our initial requests. And, well, our heads nearly exploded.

I might've freaked out on our realtor and I might've dropped off Nora at daycare in tears. (Tears were mine. Not hers.) If this process doesn't end up taking 10 years off my life, I will be shocked.

I could tell you all of the details, but it would take forever and most of you would probably find it to be extremely boring, so I'll just say that there are no MAJOR flaws with the house. No dealbreakers, anyway. Still, we were tempted more than a few times today to tell the sellers where to shove their offer and walk.

First, there are a dozen or so little nitpicky, "nuisance" items that are for us to take care of on our own over the years we'll live there. (And believe me, we are going to be living there FOREVER, because OHMYGOD we are never, EVER doing this again. Feel free to remind me of that if we ever get a wild hair and start discussing moving. Just say NO.)

There were also a few bigger things, things that were deemed officially "defective" by our inspector. So, we picked our top three priority things and sent them over to the seller, requesting that they address them. One of the things was addressed right away. Another thing was discussed, and determined to be OK (although we essentially had to concede without REALLY knowing for sure that it's OK). And with the third thing, well, the sellers decided to be assholes.

After long, drawn-out drama during which we argued with our realtor and sought several "sight unseen" estimates from electrician friends and acquaintances, we went back to the sellers and we ultimately got our way--at least on this one thing.

THANK GOODNESS.

There is not a single part of this process that has been "easy." It is unbelievable. I might be crazy, but I think that we have MAYBE paid our dues by now. I am praying to the real estate gods that they will send us a FREAKING BUYER for our place now. Amen.

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Contract

Well...

We went out and bought ourselves a house.

We love it, and cannot wait to live there. It's the size we want, with many of the features we want. Clean, hardwood floors, updated bathrooms, two-car garage, fenced-in backyard, partially finished basement, located on a cul-de-sac street. It needs a little TLC cosmetically, but nothing major--just some paint and ripping up some carpet in a few rooms.

So, I guess you can say that 50% of my stress about this whole situation is alleviated. Only now the stress about the second part--you know, what to do with our current place--seems to increase tenfold. We're still hoping to be able to sell it, and thankfully, it seems that we still have some time to do so. But we're ramping up the efforts, that's for sure. Our current back-up plan is to find a tenant.

That's right--we might become landlords. Not by choice, but the market is shitty right now and it is what it is. We'll do what we have to do to avoid having to pay two mortgages.

Over Memorial Day weekend, three new listings popped up that met our parameters, and looked interesting to us. We made appointments for Wednesday to see them, so we did a little marathon house-hunting last night, and it turns out we found "the one." We've seen some seriously messed up properties during this process, and it was refreshing to finally find one that we felt was WORTH the asking price.

Thank you to all of you who have been sending good thoughts our way for a while now. Things appear to be coming together, but we just need this other piece of the puzzle to fall into place, too. We are choosing to have faith that it will all work out, but this Type-A lady is not one to fly by the seat of her pants. To say that I am slightly uncomfortable with the situation is probably a bit of an understatement.

Assuming our inspection goes well and we can figure out a date that's good for all involved (we're having a little trouble working around vacations), we will likely be moving into our new house in late July/early August. Yippee!

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House Woes

I am a little overwhelmed by life these days. This week in particular has been a busy one, so it's been difficult to find time to blog. I have these ideas, and think I need to blog about this or that, and then I just don't have the opportunity to actually sit and write. Last night, I was working (at home, thankfully) until 10:30 p.m., and that was after having to get up early yesterday to be at an off-site meeting right at 8:00 a.m.

I'm trying to remember that everything in my life is a blessing--my "problems" are so minor compared to those of others. And I sure am thankful to have our little Nora to come home to at the end of the day. She has learned to blow REAL raspberries now (with tongue between the lips, spit, and everything) and debuted that new talent last night. Michael and I were in hysterics. She did it over and over and over again--she knew she was amusing us. What a gift she is.

We are still house hunting, and it is slowly and surely killing me. I swear.

Last week, we had an appointment to see a house, only to discover upon arrival that it was located right next to the freaking Clampetts. I'm pretty sure there was a car parked on the neighbor's lawn, but I can't clearly remember because I've tried to block it out. They had old tires and trash piled up against their house. It looked like a junkyard. That's the last time we'll make an appointment without doing a drive-by first. We were really familiar with the neighborhood, so I thought we didn't have to bother, but that's a lesson learned.

It didn't much matter anyway, because upon walking into the house, we discovered that it was disgusting. Old, dirty, and just gross. The owners are renting the place out, and God bless the people who agreed to move into that place, because it is seriously a shithole placed in the middle of an otherwise nice neighborhood. Everything was done completely half-ass. The bottom line was that this place needed way more updating than the house is worth. The neighbors were just the nail in the coffin of that place. I wish the realtor luck in selling it, because whoa.

Yesterday, we drove by three houses and eliminated them all right away. Two of them were situated in a hilly neighborhood that turned out to be a MOUNTAIN. I cannot imagine trying to drive up or down that street in the wintertime, and forget about family walks or bike rides. We'd surely lose Nora as she went flying down the hill on her tricycle one day. Nuh-uh. The other was a large house with "some updates needed," as the description said. Well, upon arrival, we could see right off the bat that it needed new windows and a roof. And, judging by the photos in the listing, it needs work inside, too. There is just not enough money in the world, my friends.

We are beginning to question our initial approach. We've been determined to stay in our current town, but after four months and little luck, we have started to widen our boundaries. We've actually found a house that we really love (from the outside and the pictures, anyway), but it's in a neighboring county with a bad rap. I think most of that rap is due to snobby city folk being judgey about the "country" folk, but I think there is likely some validity to it, too. Nora would be in a school district that isn't as good as the one we're in now, though our realtor (who also happens to be a teacher) has assured us that it's not as bad as we think. To be fair, Michael and I went to two of the best public schools in the county, and we'd say about 50% of our graduating classes did some serious drug experimentation, so it's not like those schools are perfect, either. [I realize this makes it sound like all of the area schools are terrible. Not the case at all--I'm just saying that high school is high school, and if your kid is going to be a druggy idiot, he's likely to be a druggy idiot anywhere. A kid could just as easily fall in with the wrong crowd at the BEST school than a school that's not quite the best, know what I mean?] The commute to work would rise from 5 minutes to 15 minutes. We're totally spoiled right now, so 15 minutes seems like a long ride, but we know that it's not really, and we're trying to remind ourselves of that fact.

We've considered looking into building, but we'd have to compromise on the area in which we'd like to live. Plus, my argument is that if we're going to go through the process and take the time to build, I'd want it to be our dream house--which I'm pretty convinced we could not afford at this time. Add to that the fact that most developments going up in our price range have lots the size of a shoebox, and I'm thinking that's not the right direction for us right now.

Today, we received a glimmer of hope on one front, at least: We got a call for an appointment on our current place. It's the first time the phone has rung in six weeks (I think? maybe more), so we're excited about that. I just hope that this is a serious buyer, and not the "We're just starting our search" type people. MAKE US AN OFFER, PLEASE.

Of course, should we get an offer and accept it, that puts the pressure on us for our own house hunt, because HELLO WE HAVE NO PLACE TO MOVE TO. But something's gotta give here; something has to happen first. We'd rather be in a position where we have sold our place and don't yet have another than have a place we want to buy and not be able to sell our place.

And so the saga continues...

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House Hunting Blues

Three months into the house hunting process, and two months into the house selling process, and I AM SO DONE WITH THIS SHIT.

I'm getting impatient. (Obviously.) We are having very little luck, and it is tremendously frustrating.

At the very beginning of this month, we put in an offer on a house we loved only to have it rejected because we were unwilling to remove our contingency. And, well, come to find out, that was a smart decision on our part, because have we sold our current place? No, we haven't.

In fact, we have not had a single showing in nearly three weeks. Not good. When we first put our place on the market, we were doing well for the first 5 weeks or so--at least one showing a week, and we had an open house as well. We received great feedback from people, but no one willing to put an actual offer on the table. Now, we're feeling a bit of pressure from our realtor to lower our asking price. Although we're not necessarily against that, we are disagreeing over how much. We'd like to lower it about 2.5%, and she would like to lower it about 4-5%. As a result of our disagreement, we haven't lowered it at all.

Honestly, we're not sure what to do. We are heading into April, and supposedly the market is supposed to pick up. Do we lower the price to make our listing appear "fresh" and to try to attract more buyers? Or do we hold tight, assuming that the right buyer will come along now that "the season" for real estate is upon us?

There's also part of us that doesn't even care if we can't sell our place right now because, well, it's not like we have a place to go. We don't have a new house to move into, so what's the rush? Of course, the other side of that argument is that if the right house for us does pop up onto the market, we would be in much better shape to make an "attractive" offer on it if we were already under contract on our current place.

This is such a balancing act and a waiting game. I hate it.

Last weekend, we looked at a house that we weren't expecting to like that much. It needed A LOT of work, and it was evident in the pictures. Even more evident as we walked through it. It was a house built in the 1960s, and I'm not kidding when I say that the sellers have lived in the house and HAVE NOT UPDATED A SINGLE THING. Kitchen? Needed to be gutted. Bathrooms? Needed to be gutted. All interior and exterior doors needed replacing. It needed new carpeting in the family room, stairs, and upstairs hallway. The entire house needed to be freshly painted. In other words, this was so totally the opposite of what we said we wanted when we set out on our house hunt.

But, you know, somehow, we fell in love with it. We fell in love with the idea of being able to choose everything according to our taste. Being able to make everything fresh and bright and brand new. Being able to buy more house for the money. We weren't CRAZY in love with the place, because we knew it was going to cost a lot of money to do all of these things. But we were seriously considering our options. We were researching costs for renovations and materials we would need. We figured if we could get the house for a good price (which, by our definition, was a good chunk below asking price), it would be worth buying. So, we had an appointment to return to the house with our parents to get their opinions.

And just 10 minutes before I was supposed to leave work to go to the appointment, our realtor called and said that the sellers of the house were dealing with an offer they had received earlier that afternoon. That the offer was reasonable and that the sellers were working with it.

We weren't willing to compete with someone else for the house. We had a price that we were willing to pay for it, and we knew that we would have to be willing to pay more. And we weren't.

So we let the house go.

And now we are back at square one. Again.

Unfortunately, there has not been a single new listing (meeting our criteria) that has popped up this week. Isn't the market supposed to be picking up? That's what everyone keeps telling us, but we have yet to see this big "boom" in listings.

Believe me, we are waiting.

Impatiently.

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Onto the Next

Or something.

We didn't get the house.

As some of you may have seen on Twitter, we put in an offer on Tuesday. After much debate, we decided to go in with a contingent offer at almost full list price. Although we qualify to be able to carry mortgages on both our current home and a new one, we are not keen on the idea of having to pay two at the same time. We can do it, we just don't want to do it. Still, the seller's realtor hinted that they would not be happy with a contingent offer, so we considered going in noncontingent... but ultimately just couldn't do it. As much as we love the house, it was just not worth the risk right now.

As we discussed with each other and our realtor, we all figured that it didn't make any sense for the seller to ignore our contingent offer. They don't have any other offers on the table right now, so why not look at and deal with a contingency? Even if they accept it, they still have the right to continue to market the house to noncontingent buyers, and should they receive a noncontingent offer during our contingency period, they have a right to "bump" our offer (at which time we would also have the right to remove our contingency). Seems like a win-win situation for them, right?

Well, it would be for sellers with a brain. Apparently, this seller isn't one of those.

Less than an hour after submitting our offer, we received word that they had rejected it. "They loved everything about it," we were told. "Except the contingency." The sellers said that they couldn't emotionally handle a contingent offer. I guess that's their prerogative, but...

Whatever.

We were really disappointed. Our realtor was downright pissed. She says that they are ignoring the whole purpose of the contingency system, and she thinks that their realtor is being irresponsible with her advice to her sellers.

Now, as much as it pains us to do so, we are attempting to move on. We've kept our eyes on the listings, and we actually went to see another house yesterday, but we found ourselves comparing it to the one that we lost. It's hard to believe that anything will ever pop up that was as good a deal and in as good condition as that one was. It's a real bummer.

Of course, we could change our minds and go back to them with a noncontingent offer and still get the house. But, although it is very likely that we WILL sell our current home before we would be in a situation in which we have to pay two mortgages, it's a very hard pill to swallow. Right now, our only glimmer of hope is that perhaps we will get someone in here that will love our place and we'll get a nice noncontingent offer of our own that will put us in a position to be able to go back and make a (substantially less risky) noncontingent offer on the house WE want--but obviously, all of this would need to happen before someone else puts an offer on the house we want. *sigh* We had a showing yesterday (they won't be making an offer), and we have another scheduled for tomorrow (pleasepleaseplease).

I'm trying to keep the faith that things will work out like they are supposed to, but I'm not going to lie: It's hard.

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OH.MY.GOSH.

Yesterday, we went to see a couple of houses "for fun." Judging from the info and photos online, they didn't look bad, but neither of them struck us as possibly being THE ONE.

As it turned out, one of them had a nicely updated kitchen and a nicely updated bath, but the rest of the place was a shithole. (Pardon my language, but seriously. There's no other way to describe it.)

But when we stepped foot into the other one, something happened. Dare I say it... it felt like a home. A home that could be ours. Still, we hesitated. We're not the type to take big decisions lightly. We research electronics and baby gear to death, we don't go out and buy things on a whim. So as you can imagine, we're most certainly not going to go all gung-ho on a house right away.

But after we left it, we kept talking about it. Kept talking about all of its positive features, all of the things we loved. All of the things that were on our "wish list" that this place had. And the one thing it didn't. We weighed the options, trying to figure out if we could sacrifice one thing for the benefit of so many others. And questioned whether that one thing was really that much of a sacrifice at all.

Today, we went back to see the place for a second time, with my mom and Michael's dad in tow. And our parents? Well, they pushed us over the edge, really. They loved it and thought we should go for it. Our realtor emphasized all that we would be getting for the money. We walked through the house with a fine-tooth comb, checking out all of the nooks and crannies and details that we had missed yesterday. We imagined how we would arrange furniture in rooms. We talked about the minor cosmetic updates we would make.

We imagined our lives in this house.

And tomorrow, we will sign an offer.

Tonight has been filled with talks of mortgages and down payments, inspections and closing dates, contingent and non-contingent offers. We've debated over a $1,000 difference in offer price.

We are praying that things will work out as they should. I know in my heart that they always do, but it still doesn't keep me from being nervous. If you know me at all, you know that I have trouble dealing with the unknown. But, by this time tomorrow, we should know whether or not we are homeowners (again).

We would appreciate all of the positive vibes we can get right now. For the home we hope will be ours and for selling the one that is currently ours.

*fingers crossed*

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On the Market

Yesterday, our realtor came over and we filled out all of the paperwork to put our house on the market soon.

Quite simply, I am shaking in my boots.

Now, we just wait and see if anyone likes our place. If all goes well, we'll soon have strangers walking through looking at it. It's weird.

Meanwhile, we run a search multiple times a day for new listings to see if anything comes up that we like. It gives me anxiety. As we get through February and into March, we hope to see the number of listings increase dramatically, as people rush to get their houses on the market in time for the spring, which we hear is THE time of year to buy/sell a house.

This is such an emotional process for me. I want to find a new home, but it makes me so sad to think about leaving this one. It's made extra emotional now that we have Nora, as this is the only home she has ever known--it's where we waited for her arrival; it's where we brought her home.

Being on the market--to sell a house and to buy one--is a strange feeling. It sort of feels like our current home is no longer really ours, yet we don't have another home to go to. You know me--I don't deal well when the future is so unknown, so you can imagine how this state of being gives me an overall uneasy feeling.

Keep your fingers crossed for us on both counts--buying AND selling! We hope luck tips in our favor soon.

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Hunting

Four weeks into our house hunting experience, and I've come to one conclusion:

House hunting is a pain in the ass.

It seemed so much easier the first time around; I was only 22 years old. We were less than a year out of college, both living at home with our parents, and both making shit for money, so our options were pretty limited. We had a very specific price range, and knew the area that we wanted to be in... which narrowed down our search to literally one neighborhood. Once we were ready to get serious about the search, we made appointments to look at three different units on the same day. We came, we saw them all, we made up our minds, and we bought one of them. It was that simple. Seriously.

This time? Not so much.

We like the town we live in. Because of that, we'd like to stay in this town. On one hand, that might seem like it makes things easier because it gives us a focus for our search, but really all it does is severely limit our options. And while we're in much better shape financially than we were six years ago, Rockefellers we are not, so we do have a budget.

And here's the thing: We're kinda sorta picky this time around. You see, we've spent the last six years chipping away at home improvement projects at our current place, refining it to be the place we've always wanted it to be. Now that we're essentially done with it all, well, we've outgrown our home.

All of the work--the painting (oh my god, THE PAINTING), the massive kitchen renovation, the bathroom, the floor project, the sliding glass door, the carpet--it's all so fresh in our minds. We remember what a huge effort it all was, and we just aren't ready to do it again. We want something move-in ready this time.

We want a decent kitchen.
We want decent bathrooms.
We want a two-car attached garage. (No compromises.)
We want a nice yard.
We want a deck.
We want a quiet street.
We want vinyl siding.
We don't want to have to replace a roof or windows.
We'd love a fireplace.

We've looked at a few places and have been "meh" about them. It's been a week or two since anything new has come on the market that fits into our parameters, and that's just... frustrating.

Add to all of this that we also have to worry about selling our place this time around, and well, you've got stress. Our realtor is coming over this weekend to help us get our house on the market, and it makes me so nervous. Not to mention the fact that it means we have to do all this stuff in preparation to show the house--we need to declutter, we need to clean the nooks and crannies, we need to make the house less... ours. It's a weird process.

House hunting (and selling) is a pain in the ass.

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Coming Up for Air

Well, the New Year has started off with a bang--at work, that is.

We are off and running at my company. EVERYONE is swamped. I've been running around with my head cut off all week, and my to-do list is overwhelming (and growing). Endless meetings, tons of deadlines, lots of 2011 planning--it's just crazy. I cross one task off my list only to have three more added.

It's lovely.

Still, we're all in good spirits, and we try to keep the humor in our situations. We walk around exclaiming, "OH, January. I love January." and "January is awesome." In other words, the level of sarcasm is at an all-time high.

Anyway, that explains my lack of blogging this week. I can't believe it's January 5th and I'm just now writing my first post of 2011!

We had a quiet, uneventful New Year's Eve at home, and it was just what we wanted after years and years of attending the same ol' parties. On New Year's Day, we did "Christmas" with Michael's older sister and our nephews, and some other members of his extended family.

In other news, we have officially started our house hunt. We started perusing listings online on New Year's Eve actually, and did a few "drive-bys" of places on New Year's Day. On Sunday, we went back to our favorites and took closer looks, and we already have two that we're interested in scheduling appointments to see. We are working with our realtor to see when we can get in for showings.

We're also starting to pull things together to put our place on the market. All of this is terribly exciting and scary at the same time. What if we find a house we love, but can't sell our current place? What if we put our place on the market and it sells quickly, and we have nowhere to live? The worst case scenario is definitely the former--we really don't want to end up having to pay two mortgages for any amount of time! But we will keep the faith that everything will work out as it should, like it so often does in life.

Also, we are itching to travel. We haven't been anywhere since we went to Montreal in June, and we haven't flown anywhere since we went to Florida in April. Little Miss Nora has put a serious cramp in our traveling style! ;) But now that she's past the newborn stage, we're ready to start planning family trips now, so we're exploring a few options for a week-long trip in the spring.

And we did book airfare for a trip--but this one won't be taking us anywhere until summertime. My cousin is getting married in Playa del Carmen, Mexico on July 2, and... we're going! All three of us. The airfare was reasonable and with good flight times, so we jumped on it. It's going to be hot as hell down there at that time of year, but we plan to spend a lot of time in the shade, in the pool, and um, at the swim-up bar. :)

I really hate this time of year. January, February, and March are the worst. But at least work is busy, and our time at home is happily busy, too, thanks to a certain little girl we know and love!

All in all, there is already much to look forward to in 2011!

EDIT: I just realized that it's actually January 6th. Just goes to show how out of sorts I really am! HA!

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