Our real estate agent called today to let us know that she has a couple of leads on people she thinks might be interested in our home. The first came from another agent who walked through the open house yesterday. (I guess it wasn’t a wasted event after all!) He’s a single man who she thinks will be really excited about the bathroom remodel we just completed this spring.

The other party our agent thinks may be interested is someone who called her about another house she had listed a street over. This family sounds especially interested in our neighborhood, so hopefully they’ll be just as excited about our house when they see it!

Today was the realtor’s luncheon and open house that our agent has been talking to us about since we listed the house. She catered a luncheon at our house and invited agents from all of the local companies to come walk through, have lunch, and provide feedback. We were actually a little surprised when she suggested this – we’d seen it on the HGTV shows, but thought it wasn’t something that would be done in our (non-California) area. I guess we were wrong …

I think the event was supposed to last from about 11:00-1:00 and it looks like there were around 10 agents that came and filled out surveys. We actually drove by a couple times on our way to and from lunch today and saw only one car (besides our agent’s), so we were surprised to see so many completed surveys. We were pretty happy with the feedback from the other agents. There wasn’t really anything new highlighted in the survey responses that we hadn’t already talked about and it seems like we’re about where we should be price-wise, so that’s a good thing.

Now, we’re just hoping that all 10 of those agents have clients in mind for our house and weren’t just here for the free food! Hopefully the next few days will bring at least a couple requests to show the house …

Today was the first open house for our current home! While we haven’t received any offers yet, we were encouraged by the feedback our real estate agent gave us. It sounds like there were 4 groups that came through and the comments they made were pretty positive. There was only one group that commented on needing to remove the wallpaper that covers the majority of the main floor. Another group commented that the rooms weren’t as big as they were hoping for. The other two groups gave more promising feedback. One was a relocation from Utah (who has already sold her house with a closing date in 2 weeks) and the other was a couple that is now renting. We were really excited to hear this because if either of these parties were to make us an offer, it probably wouldn’t be contingent on the sale of another property, which means we might be able to move up our closing date!

So, now we’re just crossing our fingers and waiting for the realtor’s luncheon on Tuesday and (hopefully) the call saying we’ve received our first offer.

We got to spend a couple of hours at our future home this morning doing a walk-through with the current owners. We went through each room with them and got lots of great information about the changes they’ve made over the years. (It sounds like they have gutted a number of the rooms, fully insulating the exterior walls, installing new dry wall, and having the walls Kal-Koted.) Overall, we’re feeling a lot more comfortable with everything and are getting really excited about moving in.

We were also presently surprised to see that they had taken their copy of the inspection report and started to fix items that we hadn’t even asked for! In the last week, they’d fixed some concrete and tile on the back porch and reattached a gutter that had come apart. It sounds like they are also planning to purchase a new cover for the swimming pool and have it closed for the season before they move out. While we were there, they showed us the tricks to opening the doors and windows that the inspector wasn’t able to open during the inspection as well. Now all we have to do is sell our home so we can move in!

Listing Photos Gallery

Here are the photos our real estate agent took of our house last week. They were finally posted online a couple days ago. It’s amazing how big the wide-angle lens makes the rooms look!

We got some exciting news about our new house yesterday: the current owners have purchased an empty house and they can move immediately! This means that as soon as we’re able to sell our house, we can move the closing date up and maybe move in before the end of October. We’re really relieved to know that we won’t have to worry about being homeless if our house happens to sell quickly. Now we’re just hoping we don’t have to worry about carrying two homes if it doesn’t sell so quickly …

We had the first showing of our house this afternoon at 4:00pm! We thought that was pretty good considering that the house was just listed on Friday and there aren’t even pictures of it posted online yet. Sounds like it was a young family that walked through and they were mostly disappointed in the lack of a master bathroom (something we’ve often said we wished the house had as well). As silly as it is to think that the first people to walk through the house would be the ones to write an offer, it’s a little disappointing to hear that they aren’t interested. Hopefully this is just the first of many potential buyers, though.

Our real estate agent called this morning to let us know that she’s planning an open house for next Sunday, followed by the realtor’s luncheon a week from tomorrow. We’re hoping traffic will really pick up after those two events!

Our home inspector emailed us copies of the inspection reports from the whole house and pest inspections earlier this week. The reports are pretty thorough and cover most everything we discussed when we were walking through the house, but we were a little disappointed that they didn’t include any more pictures of the property than they did. The inspector had a digital camera with him for the entire inspection and took a bunch of pictures all over the house. He made a comment about his flash not working right, so we’re guessing that the interior photos must not have turned out since they weren’t really included in the reports. It’s kind of a shame that that didn’t work out – it would have been nice to have those photos for our reference.

Based on the reports and what we saw during the inspection, we’re asking that the homeowner fix a few items before closing. Top on our list was a telephone/electrical pole on the property that looks as though it’s being held up by the power lines. There’s another cable running from the pole to the house that looks like it’s supposed to bolt into the house to help support the pole, but it’s come undone. The fix might be as easy as just re-attaching it, we’re not sure. We also asked that they fix the problem with the grounding cable not being attached to the grounding rod on the exterior of the home. We’re pretty sure this is going to be just a couple minute fix, so hopefully there won’t be any objections there. And the last thing we asked them to look at was the three exterior doors that wouldn’t open. There were two on the sun room that wouldn’t open because the carpet was a little tall and it looked like the doors were hung a little crooked too … hopefully tightening the hinges or maybe trimming the doors will fix this problem. The third door that wasn’t opening right was the main back door of the house. We couldn’t get the dead bolt to release on this door … there’s probably just a trick to it that we don’t know about, so hopefully they’ll share whatever that is.

Anyway, their real estate agent is out of town for a few days, so they probably won’t get our requests until the first part of next week. Since there shouldn’t be any major cash outlays to fix any of these things, we’re hoping they won’t have a problem with what we’re asking them for, but it’s hard to say. Up until now, they’ve been very reluctant when it comes to the home inspection … I think the whole idea made them really nervous. At first, we thought it was because they had something to hide, but now it seems like they just didn’t know what the inspection would focus on and they were afraid it would bring up all kinds of negatives that were out of their control. Between the time that our offer was accepted and when we scheduled the inspection (about a week apart), the homeowner had gone through the basement and pulled out all of the inactive knob and tube wiring so it wouldn’t show up on the report. He also said he’d removed some exterior lights that had been in the front trees (they probably weren’t to code). Given how concerned he’s obviously been about the results of the inspection, we’re hoping he’ll be relieved to see how minor the things on our list are and hopefully not challenge us.

As of this afternoon, our current house is officially listed! The real estate agent stopped by today to take photos of our home and put the “for sale” sign in the yard. It’s already on the MLS and will hopefully show up on their website in the next day or so. I’m kind of anxious to see the pictures that she took – hopefully they will make the house look really attractive.

Even though we haven’t lived here that long (and thought we weren’t attached to the house), it’s harder than I expected to see it with the sign in the yard … although I’m sure it will be a great home for whoever the next owners are.

So, we have a few minor home improvement projects to finish up this weekend and, after that, we’ll just be waiting for the first showing …

Tonight, we met with our real estate agent to fill out all of the paper work for listing our current home. It took about an hour and a half and she still needs to come back to take pictures when we are at work tomorrow. If everything goes well, our house will be added to the MLS sometime tomorrow and we should hopefully have a couple of showings in the next week. The real estate agent has indicated that she knows of a couple parties that are interested in our neighborhood and that may be walking through our house soon. She’s also scheduling a realtor’s luncheon and home tour for a week from Tuesday. Since we made the offer on the new house not contingent on the sale of this one, we’re really hoping there will be a lot of interest and we’ll get an offer quickly.