Onward

(Goodbye fair, remodeled-with-sweat-and-tears, love you so much, seriously going to miss appliances that work, kitchen)

Everyone knows that two of the most stressful things you’ll ever do is sell and buy a house. Selling our house wasn’t so bad, so far as those things go. Our agents had a solid strategy, a system really. They come in; they make the house perfect, hire a stager, put in flowers, fix EVERYTHING (at our expense, of course), price it low, real low, and spread the word. The idea is to attract a lot of interest, multiple offers, which will in turn drive the price up to where it should be and as a result the house will sell at market really quickly. It made sense, but it felt risky. In a bottomed out market with threats of a double a dip looming, it probably was risky. It certainly wasn’t cheap. The house looked realllly good. But, it worked. We had full price offers at the brokers open. If we were normal, we’d have been ecstatic I’m sure. But mostly we felt we’d left a whole lot of money on the table. We accepted offers through the weekend and a small bidding war ensued. Eventually we picked a winner, the highest bid, of course, although perhaps not my first choice of buyer. (I’d have gone with the people with the dog or the ones with the kid, not the overly demanding, seriously unlikable, first time homeowners) but regardless, it was basically off the market in less than a week and we needed to find a new house, like, soon. We negotiated a three month rent back to buy us time. A week, or should we say a sleepless eternity, later; just as our wise agent kept saying we would, we found the ideal property within our price range in a neighborhood we’d never dreamt of owning in. Ahh happy ending. Doesn’t that make it sound simple? We’re a regular HGTV half hour program I tell ya. Not.

We’re the worriers. Ask our friends. They probably won’t reveal details, they’re loyal folk, but they’ll give a telling, sarcastic, laugh and hand us a glass of wine. It’s not that we’re type A. Type A’s are organized. Type A’s don’t worry about anything because all their problems are neatly listed. We’re more like B+1/2’s, we’ve anticipated every possible issue, figured out multiple solutions, agonized accordingly, but in the end probably wrote it down on a piece of paper that we somehow misplaced and are frantically searching for. We stress. Wine does help. The new house has a patio that will be perfect for sitting out on sunny afternoons and sipping wine. I visualize that patio in all it’s glory. I’ll need that patio. Because when the inspector’s report came in, it was pretty obvious that the ideal house was a tad short of perfect.