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!

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!

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.