So, when we decided to prepare to sell our home, we enlisted the help of an agent to figure out things that we needed to do to the house prior to putting it on the market. This involved lots of fun things, such as roof/gutter cleaning, raking up the millions of leaves from our neighbor's trees, fixing up our crappy garden, etc. I did more of the fun stuff, like taking down all of our family pictures, taking down anything personalized that made it look like our family lived there.. making our home a house, I guess. Having nothing personalized on the wall (other than art canvases) makes me feel sad in a way, because it doesn't make the house feel lived in.
So, I staged the home, took everything off the counters, everything out of the nightstands, toys packed up, put some fruit in the glass trifle bowl. I was preparing the home for pictures up until the moment the photographer arrived. I don't know if you all saw the pictures I posted on Facebook from Redfin, but dang.. the photographer did a great job. He made our questionably-colored green painted walls look good, and made my home look very put together.
So, a little over a week later.. we put our house on the market on a Monday afternoon. We were under the impression that it wouldn't be listed until 5 PM, so there was no way we would have a showing on the first night, right?
WRONG. It posted on Redfin around 1 PM, and we had 3 viewings scheduled for the first night already by 3 PM that afternoon. Holy cow.. wasn't expecting that crazy of a response. So, I left work early, and I busted my butt to get home and get the house completely ready for showing (i.e. taking care of the dishes in the sink, makeup on the counter, and un-made beds). I was seriously sweating by the time I was done, which was 5 minutes before the first showing. I guess we totally underestimated our house and the response to a seller's market.
Anyways, long story short.. We had 7 showings (maybe more?) within the first 3-4 days, and two solid offers within the first 4 days.. and we accepted the offer.. which was more than the asking price. The one thing was that they wanted to close on the loan by March 31st.. 3 weeks to the day from accepting the offer. We were not expecting that soon of a closing date, but luckily, we were semi-prepared as a good amount of stuff was put into storage the previous month to prepare the house for selling.
But again, we underestimated the power of a seller's market.. even with rentals. Every good rental listing was being snatched up within days of being posted. So, panicking, we quickly applied to a local townhouse that is $100 less than our mortgage.. More than we wanted to spend, but hey.. we can't be homeless with a kid in school and a baby. We are set to hear back soon.. which is necessary as we need to move out in 12 days. So please, pray for us that we get this place and that we'll have a place to live!
