Selling our house...

Since Ira was coming on June 1st to make arrangements to sell our house we worked feverishly to get the house decluttered, cleaned, painted and ready for pictures to be taken for the listing. Luckily we had been working on it a little here and there during the year since we had been talking about putting our house on the market for months and months and just hadn't gotten everything done. We hurried to finish the flower box in front of the bay window, and added mulch to both flower beds. We painted the living room, hallway, kitchen, entryway and the girls' bedroom. The closets and the garage were a mess, but the rest of the house looked pretty good.

Ira came out, showed us what the houses in our area were selling for and told us that he recommended that we list the house for $89,900. This was WAY less than I anticipated since our house was worth over $100,000 and the last realtor we spoke to seemed to think we would list it for closer to $105,000. But, I looked that the houses currently on the market and there were several foreclosures in the area listed for less. There were also a few houses listed in the 90's and 100's but they had either been on the market for a long time without being sold or were much newer homes than ours. After seeing a listing for a house with an identical floor plan as ours, same sq ft, built about the same time, and it had new carpet, fresh paint, a deck, and was listed at $89,900 we decided that we would probably be lucky if we would get it ours to sell for close to that. So we agreed to list the house at $89,900 and he took the pictures, we signed the papers and he assured us that he would get it listed before he left for his cruise. He provided us with a "net sheet" that showed us what our net profit would be if we accepted an offer for $85,000 and after closing costs and everything we would end up with around $1500. Boo. Oh well, at one point while we were in bankruptcy we considered just turning the house over to the mortgage company with a deed in lieu of foreclosure so at least this is better than that.

I had heard people say that the first few weeks after a house goes up for sale are the busiest, and that it was best to make sure the house is always ready for showings. Scott thought I was crazy and was sure we would have plenty of time to get the house the way we wanted it for showings. Luckily though, he humored me and we continued to constantly work to get things done to make the house look as good as possible. Our house officially went on the market on June 2nd although the pictures and listing didn't show up properly until June 3rd. Ira assured us we would be in good hands with his partner Randy if we had questions or concerns while he was on his cruise.

We got our first call to schedule a showing that weekend and our first showing was set for Monday June 7th. We got a good feedback from the showing and the realtor said they were interested and they had to talk to their mortgage company. I figured they all said that and didn't really think too much about it. We had several more showings that first week but didn't really get much feedback from the other showings. Friday evening I get a call from Randy and he tells me we have an offer on the house. The offer is $87,000 and they requested we pay $1500 of their closing costs and that we purchase a home warranty for $399. We already anticipated that the buyer would request the home warranty and we knew that most buyers would request up to $3000 in closing costs, so we were shocked that we had an offer that was so reasonable. Randy suggested that we counter offer and ask for $88,000 but aside from that he said it sounded like a really solid offer. We agreed, and countered the offer. They accepted the offer the following day. Holy cow, did we really just sell our house in 9 days?

Again, things just seem to be falling into place. It seems too good to be true.