Thursday, August 27, 2009

August 27, 2009

Staying busy around here these days.

- Saturday we had four couples come through to see the house.
- Sunday we had around 10 or 11 (I lost count) come through.
- Monday and Tuesday we had Realtor showings
- I will be cleaning all day tomorrow for open house this weekend
- Boys and I went to the zoo on Tuesday and had lots of fun
- Nick is now sick with cold-like symptoms and fever that comes and goes
- I'm not feeling great either; very tired and sinuses are not good
- Called 6 references for two architects and got 5 voice mails; waiting to hear back.
- Made a list of all changes we want to the plan we like. Looking forward to meeting with architect, hopefully next week sometime.
- We close on our lot tomorrow afternoon.
- Now we just have to sell the house, although I have been praying that it will happen in God's perfect timing.
- The boys and I were able to stay home all day yesterday and today and chill, with no preparations for showing the house either day. It was quite a relief, especially with Nick sick and me not feeling 100%.

That's my quickie update. Ta ta for now!

Friday, August 21, 2009

August 21, 2009

We are winding up for our second weekend of open houses. Last weekend we were pleased with the response we had and we have had tons of people take flyers from the box in the yard (although I think they have slowed down now that all of the people in the neighbor have gotten one:).

We have listed our house on MLS and the agent we used also pushes it out to about 30 other real estate sites. We received a call today from a guy who left a message, asking some questions about the house. Unfortunately, his call came in when Nick was talking to daddy on my phone so it ended up going to voice mail. We left a return message this evening but have not heard back yet.

I listed the open house on Craig's List today also. It will be interesting to see how many people come by this weekend. I think we really missed the busy season, since people normally try to move before their kids start the school year.

The boys and I had a good week. The house was very clean so we really took it easy and had fun for much of the week. I took them to the used book store on Monday and we picked out a handful of great books. We have been doing lots of reading this week. I also ordered a couple of things from Amazon. One is a kid's calendar kind of thing that we change together every morning. It includes seasons, weather also and it is really cute. The boys are both enjoying it. I'll write more about it later or maybe post a picture. One of the other things I ordered is a positive parenting incentive program type of thing for kids. I'll write more about that later too. We have not received it yet but it sounds really good and positive. I also ordered a couple of books for the boys.

I spent a good deal of today cleaning again and that will likely be my life on Fridays until we sell the house. The dusting and floors have to be done on Friday, in order for them to look good for both Saturday and Sunday. So, that's my life on Friday's for now.

Right now, everyone is asleep except me. I am still ramping down from all of the work I did tonight, while the dad was putting the boys down. I had better get to sleep though. Good night!

Saturday, August 15, 2009

August 15, 2009

We had our first open house today and it went very well. We really didn't expect many people to come through but we had 4 couples and 1 single guy (an architect). We also had a couple of others who stopped out front and picked up one of the flyers from the flyer box we got at Home Depot.

We were able to get a very good For Sale By Owner sign, the flyer box and the Open House signs from Home Depot for a reasonable price. The husband took the boys with him to print some color flyers to go in the box. Today we just used some black and white flyers with no pics, since we just got the box last night. The color ones will have nice pics of the outside and inside of the house, so that will be nice.

On Monday, we plan to sign up with an organization that will list our home on MLS. We can also order one of the lock box things that go on the door, in the event that a buyer's agent wants to show our home. We will pay a buyer's agent a certain percentage and the husband is thinking we might want to pay them a little more than they would normally get at first, to see if that helps. Since we won't have to pay a seller's agent, we can give the buyer's agent a bit more and still come out ahead.

So we had more people come through today than we really expected, which was great. It is very hard to tell who might be interested but it is definitely a numbers game so the more the merrier. We are having another open house tomorrow from 1-5 and we will likely continue to do this every weekend that makes sense (not holiday weekends). If we get this many people come through each weekend, we should sell it in a reasonable amount of time.

The boys did great, although I found it a bit stressful, trying to keep them busy while also talking with the people who came though. I may take them somewhere to play tomorrow. It is hard for them because they don't get to take a nap and they can't be loud and run around and stuff like that. They did well today because they watched two movies (started becoming bored about half way through the second one) and then they played outside for a little while and then I took them upstairs for a little while and let them play up there. It was still hard though because they could not make messes. They had to pick up their toys after playing with them, before getting out something else (hey, this might be a good thing!). They are not used to doing that and I know they got tired of hearing me tell them to pick up that and put this away, etc.

I think we had a good first day and we both felt good about the method we are using to sell our house. That is a good thing. Thanks for your thoughts and prayers. We appreciate it. Hope you had a good Saturday.