We heard back from our real estate agent this afternoon with some really good news: our buyer has reviewed both appraisals (the one that came in low and the one that came in high) and he’s decided to move forward with his original offer on our house! Even though it delayed everything by another week, the second appraisal was definitely worthwhile. We’re really happy with the outcome and so excited to be able to move forward with our packing and moving arrangements.

We are also starting to get really excited about our new house (something we’d nearly lost sight of with everything that’s been going on for the last couple of weeks). Here are a few new pictures we got as part of our appraisal report. Only 10 days to go!

Today we got back the results of the appraisals on both our current home and the home we’re moving to. Our new house was appraised for exactly the same value we agreed to purchase it for. Normally, this wouldn’t be anything we’d be particularly surprised or excited about, but given the issues we’ve had with the appraisal on our current home, we were pretty happy to hear that there won’t be any further negotiation required on the home we’re purchasing. What a huge feeling of relief that was! Now we just have to sit back and wait for the closing.

The second bit of good news we got today came in the form of the appraisal results on our current house. It was actually the second appraisal of our house; the first took place last week and reported that our house was valued at less than what we’d agreed to sell it for. We just couldn’t believe that the appraisal was accurate, so we asked for a second opinion, which we got today. And I’m so glad we did. Today’s appraisal came out just over the amount we agreed to sell it for. Yay! We still aren’t quite out of the woods on this one, though – we still need to renegotiate the sales price with the buyer (taking into account the results of both appraisals) and we’re not sure how that’s going to turn out. Regardless, though, the positive outcome of the second appraisal should work in our favor. Hopefully we’ll be able to get all of the remaining details of the sale ironed out in the next day or so …

So now, the only thing remaining is to pack and actually move … who knew we’d reach the point where that would seem like the easy part of the whole house buying, house selling, and moving adventure!

Last Monday was the moment of truth for our current home: the whole house inspection, the pest inspection, and the appraisal.

Good news is that nothing majorly unexpected turned up as a result of either inspection. (Yay!) The pest inspection showed nothing of concern. We haven’t seen (and probably never will see) a copy of the whole house inspection report, so we’re not sure what all was commented on there, but we were relieved to find out from our real estate agent yesterday that there aren’t any major repairs being asked for by the buyer.

The inspection did point out the lack of GFCI outlets in our kitchen as being a safety hazard, so our buyer is requesting that we replace them. Good news is that there’s no requirement that we hire the work done, so that’ll probably be our do-it-yourself project for the weekend. The inspector also noticed that our washing machine has been discharging into the utility sink in the laundry room rather than using the stand pipe. (We’re somewhat ashamed to admit it’s been this way for a couple years … we’ve just been too lazy to make the call to Roto Rooter to have the problem fixed.) Even though it’s not a safety issue or anything that could really prevent the sale from going through, they still requested that we do what it takes to get that problem corrected; something we were planning to do anyway … eventually.

The not so great news from last Monday was related to the appraisal. Unfortunately, our buyer’s appraiser wasn’t as impressed with our home as everyone else involved in the transaction and he assigned a value less than what we agreed to sell it for (something that everyone we’ve talked to tells us almost never happens … ug). So, now, we’re waiting on a second appraisal, which is scheduled to take place at the start of next week, hoping that will help us figure out how to handle the discrepancy in price. Thank goodness our buyer has been understanding enough to work with us on this!

So, one concern abated thanks to the positive inspection results and a whole other can of worms opened with the appraisal results. Looks like the next week and a half (until we start signing papers for the closings) are going to be full of negotiations …

After several days of going back and forth with the various real estate agents, we’ve finally landed on the magic date (for now, at least). The current plan is to close on our new (old) home on the morning of September 28th, although we won’t actually take possession of the house until 5:00pm on Saturday, the 29th. That’ll make moving a little more complicated than we were hoping because we won’t really be able to get much of a start on Saturday before everyone’s tired and ready to do something other than help us move. And we’ll still need to be out of our house by sometime on Sunday afternoon so we can turn it over to our buyer. So, that puts our prime moving time in conflict with everyone’s church schedules. Right now, it’s looking like we probably won’t have much of a choice but to work pretty late on Saturday night and hope that all of our helpers are ok with doing the same!

I’m sure every move is probably as much of a struggle to coordinate as this one, but I’ve been pretty amazed with how much thought has gone in to picking these dates and times. It’s been complicated by the fact that I’ll be traveling the previous week (out of town from Tuesday through Thursday night) and the state we live in has some regulation that makes it so that there has to be a waiting period between the time that we close on our current home and the time that we close on the new one to give the money a chance to change hands. It amounts to being able to do one closing in the morning and one in the afternoon, but really no more than two in one day.

So, the way it sounds like it’s going to play out is that we’ll need to go to our attorney’s office on Monday, September 24th, before I leave to sign the papers for our house. Then we don’t actually have to be there for the closing on our house, so the gentleman who purchased it will close on Thursday (the 27th) without us present. That’ll give time for the funds to transfer so that we can close on our new house on the morning of Friday, September 28th, and the current owners of that house will have an opportunity to close on their new home on the afternoon of the 28th.

Then we’ll have to go in reverse order for the move … the current owners of our new home will have until 5:00pm on Saturday, September 29th to move out of their home, and we’ll have until about 5:00pm on Sunday, September 30th to move out of ours. Thank goodness the people we’re buying from are moving into an empty house and our buyer doesn’t seem to be in that big of a rush to move in or the weekend would be even more hectic than it already is.

I’m just really glad that we’ve finally got at least a partial plan in place so we have an idea of what we’re working toward … now I just need to get a start on packing!

While we still don’t know for sure exactly when our closing dates will be for our current home and our new home, we know it’s coming up quick, probably sometime near the end of September. We’re really excited to be able to move earlier than we were originally thinking, but that also means that there’s a lot of stuff we need to get finalized in the upcoming weeks. Here’s a copy of our current to-do list:

• Visit our bank and lock in a mortgage rate.
• Call the attorney’s office and let them know we’ve sold our house.
• Have the real estate agent fax updated copies of both purchase agreements to the attorney and bank.
• Work with the buyer of our house to schedule the whole house inspection, pest inspection, and appraisal.
• Work with the bank to schedule the appraisal of our new home.
• Meet with our insurance agent.
• Reserve a moving truck.
• Pack!
• Have the gas & electric transferred to our name at the new house.
• Move the cable and phone service from our current home to the new one.
• Update our address for magazines, newspapers, bills, etc.

Hopefully we’ll be able to get a good start on the first half of the list this week. The second half will probably have to wait until we have a better idea of when we’ll actually be moving, which we’re hoping will be sometime in the next week or so …

Only 15 days after initially listing our home, we accepted an offer this afternoon!

Our real estate agent had called earlier in the week to schedule a showing for this morning at 11:00am. A couple of days later, I came home from work to find a surprise visitor (the man who had scheduled the showing for this weekend) wandering around the yard checking out the house. He had apparently thought the home was vacant and was really embarrassed when he figured out we were still living here. We invited him in, though, and let him look around the house. He only stayed for a few minutes but seemed really positive. We thought it was a good sign yesterday when our real estate agent called to tell us that he still wanted to come take a look at the house again today at 11:00, but we had no idea he was so close to making an offer. By 1:30 this afternoon, our agent had called to present the offer!

The gentleman purchasing our 1980’s split foyer home made us an offer contingent on the whole house inspection, pest inspection, and him securing financing. (All of these items should be resolved during the next week.) He’s also requested that we leave the washer and dryer, which we were previously planning to move to the new (old) house. There are no contingencies on him selling his current home and it sounds like he’s really flexible on the closing date. The suggestion right now is to close on 28 September 2007. We’re really excited about the possibility of moving our closing date up by a whole month!

Needless to say, today has been a very exciting day for us! Hopefully, our buyer feels the same way …

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.

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!