Real Estate Moguls

Move over Donny T cause there are new real estate moguls in town and we don’t need no steenkeen apprentice. We’ve already got two of our own. We just need a robo-realtor (played by “Nadine”), a disco-dancing family of marshmallow-eating bird wranglers to stay with for the weekend (played by “Lynn” and “Steffon”), a brilliant inspirational mastermind (played by Heavenly Father) and an opera-professor-turned-mortgage-broker in a pear tree (played by “Henry”).

So it’s hard to blog about things like home buying and selling homes without giving away too much personal information. I will say this, we are blessed!

Just over two weeks ago we decided to start seriously looking for a new home. By Sunday we were really discouraged and felt that there was no way we could find something in our price range that was worth buying.

The next morning, the first property we went to was priced well below the others we had looked at and it instantly felt like the right one. It had been sitting on the market for a “while” (take that with a grain of salt in this crazy market) and so we were able to get it for below their asking price. Within minutes of their counter-offer, another full price offer was made which they were unable to take because they had already signed with us.

The inspection turned out very clean. The house has a lot of “potential” (meaning we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us) but is in really good condition and move-in ready. It has a big back yard, 4 bedrooms, a tiled eating area (No more scraping macaroni off the dining room rug? Be still my heart!), and a family/play room on the main floor besides the formal living room (To become the music room/office. Who needs a formal living room, I ask you?). It is exactly what we were looking for.

Then this rainy weekend we put our house on the market and left to stay with Lynn and Steffon, with whom we had a great vacation. They are so fun and great to take us in when we didn’t want to be anywhere near the realtors and potential buyers milling around our home. And "milling" they were, I'm told. Our realtor did a fabulous job.

Within two days we had multiple offers on the table with the price escalating well above our asking price. Not only did the winning bidder pay more for our condo than we did for our new place, but they had no “out clauses” attached, no neighborhood review, no inspection required, no financial contingency. A completely clean deal, with a large amount of earnest money down.

We moved back into our home to pack with no showings to do, no realtors to talk to, done, done duh done done done. They are willing to close whenever we want to so we will be able to use the proceeds from the sale to buy the new home.

I’m kind of in shock and so grateful. Things could not have worked out more perfectly. We will be moving in a few weeks and then I’ll be more able to tell you how much “potential” the new home really has and how much slave labor it requires.

What it means to me is that we now have a home big enough to raise a fairly large family (no, still not an announcement) and even if the prices continue to skyrocket to insanity, we will be able to stay in an area we love and with a job Dan really enjoys and not be forced out for financial reasons. Yippee! Now to work with us all. I plan to pay Laylee one penny for every rock she picks out of the grass in the back yard.

I’m not posting pictures because it would be too easy to identify it on the MLS but I will say, it has a red front door and a face that looks like an owl with massive slanting eyebrows.