Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Why don't we just live here forever?

So we went and met with the builder yesterday and they are expecting our new house to be done end of August, at the latest. To me, that actually means, end of August at the soonest and that would be just fine with me. We got to walk through the model like ours and it's much smaller than I imagined. Tim says I'm just being Albert Brooks in "Lost in America", and he's probably right, but the rooms just looked so small. Funny since I complain about the rooms in this house being too big. Go figure. Anyway, the sales lady who showed us around was like, "is your house on the market?" "No." "Girl, you need to get that house on the market! This is the season when people buy houses because kids are out of school!" I gave some lame defenses, but she's 100% right. So we're madly trying to get everything done that needs to be done. It can seem so overwhelming. Tim pointed out we used to have endless energy for this sort of thing. Of course, that was until a certain little small two-legged creature came along and zapped that energy with her baby-ray. Also, dammit, I know you have to "spend money to make money" (I watch 'Buy Me'), but all this money we're spending for fix-ups (new doorknobs, paint, carpet cleaning), sucks. We've already decided instead of replacing the carpet we're going to offer a carpet allowance. So that's another 2 or 3k off our profit. And people keep putting their houses up for sale in our neighborhood and offering them for a bowl of cat food and a potted plant. I swear, STOP SELLING YOUR HOUSE FOR CHEAP! We don't need those cheap comparables bringing down our asking price. We like the comparable two houses over that sold for $198k and the one last year down the street that sold for $250k. Of course, both of those are substantially larger than our house, but I still like those apples better than the freakin' huge house in the north section of our neighborhood that just went on the market for $169,900. The listing does say 'SOLD AS IS, NO WARRANTY', so it's probably a crap bucket, but still, how bad could a six-year old house be? Also, both it and the house down the street that's up for $179,900 (again, much larger than ours), back up to the train. And they don't have nice landscaping. And they have brick, not stone. So hopefully all the extras about our house will work for it, even if it's smaller than these others. But we're going to try and work, work, work and hopefully start talking with realtors by mid-May. I realized that after you sell, you still have like 30 days before you close, so we need to sell this house!

2 comments:

Tara said...

Well, we're not quite ready to buy a house. Still, if you do end up deciding to sell your house for a potted plant and a bowl of pet food let me know. I've got the pet food already, and I'm sure I could find a nice plant. :)

loni said...

Houses always look smaller without furniture. It'll look so much bigger and better when you see the model with all the stuff in it.