Exciting house stuff
As some of you know, 
Shari and I had put a contract down on a new-construction home that ended up not being built. Well, we ended up finding another builder in the area that interested us, and we purchased a home through them instead. The contracts are all signed, the permits have been applied for and are due back any day now, and they're expecting to be finished sometime in late August or early September.
What this means, of course, is that we needed to sell our current house so we'd have the cash to pay for the down payment on the new one. So, we got in touch with our Realtor, and started the process going. We spent several weeks getting the house ready, right down to the very last moment before the house was to be put on the market, and even a bit past that. The place absolutely sparkles, and I don't think it's been this clean since before we moved in. We threw out or donated quite a bit of crap, and loaded my Father-in-law's trailer with a lot of stuff we will need once we move into the new house, but don't need right now. Finally, it was time to put the house on the market.
We put the house up for sale last Thursday, and started showing it on Saturday morning. We had a contract offer by Monday night, negotiated the price on Tuesday, and had signed paperwork completed Tuesday night! The final price was $6,000 under our asking price, but right in the range of what we expected to actually get for the house. We settle on June 4th. Whoever said the housing market has tanked sure hasn't been by here! It's all going so fast, though. We hadn't expected the house to sell for the first few weeks or a month, and now suddenly we're going to have to move by June 1st!
Fortunately (at least, we think so), Shari's brother and his wife have offered to let us live with them until the house is built, as they've got plenty of space they're not using. We're taking them up on thier offer, after checking with them to make sure the extended stay was still OK with them. :-) So, no rent or mortgage payments for a few months, which means we'll be able to afford to put a bit more down on the new place.
Speaking of the new place, I called the builder's sales rep on Tuesday afternoon to tell him we'd sold our current house (we had signed a non-contingent contract with them, but we figured they'd be glad to hear we'd actually be able to afford to follow through). When he answered the phone, he told me "You know, I was just going to call you!" Apparently, the builder has discontinued the model we purchased, and replaced it with a new model that is the same basic house but re-arranged on the inside with some differnet structural options available than the ones we'd chosen. He gave us the plans to look over, and we gave him a list of questions we had.
They're still willing to build us the home we originally contracted for, but they basically offered to do a "one-for-one" swap, just give us the new model and not quibble over price. However, when we looked it over, we realized that because of the structural changes, a number of things we'd wanted were no longer available, although we like the inside much better. There's also no gourmet kitchen listed on the plans he showed us, but they're preliminary and that looks like it was an oversight (if it's not, that's a deal-breaker). Because of that, it looks like some negotiating (or at least a bunch of questions answered to our satisfaction) is in order. I wonder how important it is to them to get us into the new model? ;-)
Basically, just when we thought we had finally gotten everything settled with the new house and they were ready to start building, they throw another huge curveball at us. Oh, well. We'll figure it out.
Needless to say, we've been pretty stressed for the last couple of weeks, adn will probably continue to be for a few more. It's positive stress, though -- when we're finished, we'll have sold our house, and our new one will be on its way to being ready for us to move into it.
Shari and I had put a contract down on a new-construction home that ended up not being built. Well, we ended up finding another builder in the area that interested us, and we purchased a home through them instead. The contracts are all signed, the permits have been applied for and are due back any day now, and they're expecting to be finished sometime in late August or early September.
What this means, of course, is that we needed to sell our current house so we'd have the cash to pay for the down payment on the new one. So, we got in touch with our Realtor, and started the process going. We spent several weeks getting the house ready, right down to the very last moment before the house was to be put on the market, and even a bit past that. The place absolutely sparkles, and I don't think it's been this clean since before we moved in. We threw out or donated quite a bit of crap, and loaded my Father-in-law's trailer with a lot of stuff we will need once we move into the new house, but don't need right now. Finally, it was time to put the house on the market.
We put the house up for sale last Thursday, and started showing it on Saturday morning. We had a contract offer by Monday night, negotiated the price on Tuesday, and had signed paperwork completed Tuesday night! The final price was $6,000 under our asking price, but right in the range of what we expected to actually get for the house. We settle on June 4th. Whoever said the housing market has tanked sure hasn't been by here! It's all going so fast, though. We hadn't expected the house to sell for the first few weeks or a month, and now suddenly we're going to have to move by June 1st!
Fortunately (at least, we think so), Shari's brother and his wife have offered to let us live with them until the house is built, as they've got plenty of space they're not using. We're taking them up on thier offer, after checking with them to make sure the extended stay was still OK with them. :-) So, no rent or mortgage payments for a few months, which means we'll be able to afford to put a bit more down on the new place.
Speaking of the new place, I called the builder's sales rep on Tuesday afternoon to tell him we'd sold our current house (we had signed a non-contingent contract with them, but we figured they'd be glad to hear we'd actually be able to afford to follow through). When he answered the phone, he told me "You know, I was just going to call you!" Apparently, the builder has discontinued the model we purchased, and replaced it with a new model that is the same basic house but re-arranged on the inside with some differnet structural options available than the ones we'd chosen. He gave us the plans to look over, and we gave him a list of questions we had.
They're still willing to build us the home we originally contracted for, but they basically offered to do a "one-for-one" swap, just give us the new model and not quibble over price. However, when we looked it over, we realized that because of the structural changes, a number of things we'd wanted were no longer available, although we like the inside much better. There's also no gourmet kitchen listed on the plans he showed us, but they're preliminary and that looks like it was an oversight (if it's not, that's a deal-breaker). Because of that, it looks like some negotiating (or at least a bunch of questions answered to our satisfaction) is in order. I wonder how important it is to them to get us into the new model? ;-)
Basically, just when we thought we had finally gotten everything settled with the new house and they were ready to start building, they throw another huge curveball at us. Oh, well. We'll figure it out.
Needless to say, we've been pretty stressed for the last couple of weeks, adn will probably continue to be for a few more. It's positive stress, though -- when we're finished, we'll have sold our house, and our new one will be on its way to being ready for us to move into it.