Sorry, can’t be changed.

We had two realtors and clients through here on Sat.  One had wanted to come in last Wed, but we were all very sick at the time and in the middle of a big tiling adventure, so the upstairs bath and laundry room were a mess, so we put her off. 

She was in the house for about 25 minutes.  I know because I was in my usual waiting place when PB (potential buyers) don’t show up until the absolute end of the time window they give you for when they are coming: across the street in front of the neighbors.  Haven’t heard back from our RE agent on her feedback.

Did get feedback from the two married RE agents who came through last week.  They liked the main floor and the upstairs, but didn’t like the layout of the basement.  Okay, that’s fair, but just what do you expect us to do with that info?  It’s not like you don’t like the paint and we can repaint.  The layout is pretty much set in stone and we can’t do anything about it.  C’mon, comment about the things we can fix, or change or improve, not the ones we can’t.

This week the tiler is working on the master bathroom, which means it will be pretty much out of commission for about 2-3 days.  The tile does look good in the rooms he’s done.  Shoulda done it years ago so we could enjoy it longer.  Of course, if the house doesn’t sell soon, we will be enjoying it longer!

They just keep coming!

I guess when you have a house to show, it’s either feast or famine.  We signed on with our new realtor on Jan. 2.  Then waited…and waited…and waited.   Three weeks into the listing we finally got someone through (read previous post).  Then 10 days goes by and then we come home from church yesterday and our realtor calls.  She had a message on her phone from a realtor (she goes to the same church and came home about the same time we did)  who wanted to see our house between 2:45 and 3:15. It is now 2:15.  Ack!  The kitchen was a mess from the big breakfast we made and left before we went to church.  Plus bedrooms had been messed up again and normal debris scattered about.  Quickly clean and then take the dog and leave.  Haven’t heard feedback from that realtor yet.

Today starts with a big snowstorm which drops over a foot of snow.  We had to shovel the driveway twice before DH finally breaks out the snowblower and goes at it.  Surely, no one is looking at houses today.  WRONG!  While I am at the store, realtor calls and tells DH that someone is coming through between 7 and 8.  Okay, it’s only 3, so we have plenty of time to tidy up and have dinner.  We stayed at the house until 7:50 and no one comes.  Finally we take the dog and leave, taking a little trip to our local Arctic Circle drive-through.  DH is getting a cold and not happy about having to be out and about, so we head home right after.  Of course, just as we are heading up the main street in our neighborhood at 8:04 we see a car pull up in front of our house.  Not having anyplace else to go, we pull over about a half block away from our house and watch as a man and little boy head into the house.  As we sat there, our realtor, who lives on the next cul-de-sac after ours comes around in her SUV.  She recognizes our car and flashes her lights, then turns onto our cul-de-sac and checks out the car. Then she came out and drove up to us. We told her it didn’t look like there was a realtor there, just a dad and a little boy, so she goes back to check.  Returns with the info that it is a husband and wife realtor team who are looking for themselves.  So we watch the dad and boy come out and the mom and maybe same, maybe different boy go into the house for a look around.  We’ll get feedback in a day or two about what they thought.

As stated in previous posts, I HATE having my house on the market!  Having to keep it model clean at all times IN CASE, someone wants to look through.  Then when you don’t get any lookers for a day or two, you relax your cleaning vigilance.  After all, people do live here-it’s NOT actually a model home.  As each day passes without any calls, it gets messier and messier. And then at the worst possible time, or with the least amount of notice you get the call: Someone wants to see your house in 1 hour.  AAAARRRGGGHHH! Here we go again.  I’m not sure which is better, having a constant flow of people so you stay on top of things, or having someone through every 4 or 5 days and having to do a sprint spring cleaning in a short amount of time.  Whoever came up with the concept of showing homes in the buying and selling of them should be condemned to clean a 7 bedroom, 3 storey house every hour (Which gets messed up the moment you finish) for the rest of Eternity. That would truly be Hell for me.

My realtor keeps telling me, it only takes one person to see your house and really like it for it to sell. True, but isn’t there some way to weed out all these other looky-loos so we don’t have to go through this exercise every few days for months?

And on she goes…

Well, almost 3 weeks back on the market and have had one family through.  They said they liked it and the price was right, but there are SO MANY houses on the market right now that it is tough to choose. Same old refrain: so many houses to choose from.

It’s probably not a real busy time right now in the RE market. Plus it has been icy cold here the last couple of weeks, so maybe people are just staying home and staying warm.

We are supposed to tile our master bath, laundry room and upstairs bath, but we can’t get the tile guy to commit to a day and actually follow through.  He was supposed to come last Monday, then he put it off til Friday (yesterday), but called and put it off til Monday again. If he calls Monday and tries to put it off again, then he is done.  He will be told not to bother and we will get somebody else. I hate it when workmen put you off.  We had cleaned out every thing and cleared off the floors and taken off the baseboards in prep, and then he is a no show.  Not very professional of him.  He must be cheap, because that’s what DH likes to hire.  Then they do a substandard job, or they are not reliable. Wish I was in charge of the hiring.  Might cost a little more, but the work would get done!

As far as the new construction on the house, it is pretty much at a standstill.  DH has somebody down there today pulling wire for the electrical.  We’ve decided to wait on continuing until this house is sold because we just really don’t have the money to go on right now.  We did lower the price in this house and hope it will bring people in.

I sure hate just waiting around, not knowing when we can move on.  It’s almost like being pregnant.  You know the baby is going to come, but you just don’t know exactly when and you can’t really plan. Only in this case, I’m sure we’ll be “overdue” more than a few days or weeks.

Nothing yet…

Well, the house has been officially back on the market for 2 days.  I got a call from a RE agent this morning to see if we had relisted.  Probably wanted to see if he could snag us if we hadn’t yet.  He said he had a client who might be interested so he would call Heidi.

I spent most of the day digging out the old caulking in the master shower which had been invaded by mold.  It wouldn’t wash off or bleach out, so the only solution was tear it out and put in new.  Ick, what a job.  It’s not easy to dig out.  I don’t think I want a shower with caulking again.  Then I got the wrong color caulk so I had to wipe out what I had done, go to Home Depot and get another tube of the right color and do it all again. BUT, it’s all done now and looks good.  At least I think so.

Now to tidy up my sewing room and mop the floors and vacuum and supervise kid’s room cleaning and, and and….(Did I mention how much I HATE cleaning?)

Here we go again!

We have been unlisted since Nov. 1.  We decided we just needed a little break and didn’t really want troops of people walking through the house at Christmas. (Yeah, like we would really get troops of people this time of year. lol)

DH is really leaving the decision about the new RE agent up to me.  I have interviewed 4 people and had it down t0 two, but then found out that a woman in our neighborhood is a RE agent.  I kinda knew she was, but thought she just did commercial real estate.  Then a friend was singing her praises because she helped this friend finally get into a townhouse. When I interviewed her, she said she doesn’t usually have a lot of clients, because she doesn’t want to be too busy and not be able to “dazzle” her clients with how good she is.  Good, I said, we need some dazzling, both for us and potential buyers.  So, Heidi, dazzle away.

So, because of this decision, all the Christmas decorations came down over the last couple of days.  Well, except for the family tree in the family room.  We’re gonna let the kids help us undecorate it.  Now I need to do a good deep cleaning and she’ll be good to go.  I am NOT excited about getting back into  house showing mode again (see previous posts), but it is a necessary evil if we want to get this place sold.  I am looking forward to seeing what a new agent will do for us, how she will dazzle us.

As far as our home under construction, the furnace ducting is in, the plumbing is roughed in, we’ve hired a guy to do our cabinets, the windows and sliding doors are in, and DH has begun the electrical work, so it is progressing.  It is a little difficult to get a lot done right now because the house is surrounded by snow about 3 ft deep.  We’ve been having lots of storms.

Hope the buyer comes along pretty soon….

Silly questions

It is interesting to talk to real estate agents who want your business. They all seem to think that they have the most new and innovative ideas for marketing your house, when in reality, they all do the same things: set the price at the “fair market value” so that it will sell quickly and for the best price, “stage” the home so that it will look like a model home (see previous posts on this subject), post pictures of your home on the MLS and every other home magazine, flyer and postcard so everyone is aware your home is for sale,  put up a sign, and let all other RE agents know about your listing so they can bring their clients through.  They may phrase it differently, but they all do the same things.

They also can ask some pretty silly questions, like:  Why do you think your home hasn’t sold?  Well, duh, let’s see:

1. There are over 1000 other homes on the market just in our town alone.

2. There are 126 homes for sale in our price range in our town.

3. Mortgages are hard to come by these days. (Read the papers, the mess of the RE market is well known by now)

4. It’s a buyer’s market and they know it, so they expect you to make all sorts of concessions, like selling your home so low that you might as well give it away.

5. If I knew the answer to this question, don’t you think I would have done what I needed to to get it sold? It’s the realtor’s job to know why my house isn’t selling and tell me how to fix it.

I am in the process of setting up interviews with some agents. I have selected two that worked with either family or friends and come highly recommended, a women that I worked with a few years ago, and a woman who is the top seller in SLC valley (she even won an award as Agent of the Year).  After I have talked to them, then we will see.

Piranhas?

This morning I got a call from a real estate agent. He reminded me that our listing had expired with our current agent and wanted to know if we would be interested in hiring HIM to take over our listing. While I was on the phone with him, I got 4 clicks indicating calls waiting on the line. After I got off the phone, I checked the caller ID and they were all calls from RE’s. Then I got about 4 more calls after that, all of which I ignored. AARRRGGGHHHH The sharks are circling, looking for fresh blood! It is AMAZING how fast they are on you once your listing expires.

I called Ray and asked him what I should say to these “sharks” and he told me to tell them that if they had a buyer for our house, a definite buyer, we would sign with them for one day, but the buyer would have to sign a contract immediately. But the agent would get the full commission, so I would think that would motivate them. The calls stopped soon after, but I am sure they will start up again this afternoon; the scent of an unattached RE client is just too much for them.

Ray wants to take it off the market for a bit to get some things done that may help with the sale. I am glad to think that I won’t have people trooping through my house for at least a couple of weeks. And when we decide to put it back on the market, the RE agent is going to be interviewed and carefully selected. I want a bulldog, or maybe a bloodhound who is going to put all of his/her resources into finding us a buyer. I was not happy with our most recent realtor. He didn’t communicate well and I didn’t feel we were a priority with him. He had 6 months to get this sold and he didn’t. He’s DONE!

Still at it

I haven’t posted for awhile, mostly because I couldn’t get the password to reset on my blog account.  Finally fixed that. Now for an update.

House is still on the market. No nibbles.  There is a family of 10 (parents, 8 kids) who are very interested, but haven’t been able to sell their house either.  I hate that domino effect: we’ll buy your house when ours gets sold… the market is as bad for them as for us.  Our realtor’s contract is up on Thursday, and we won’t be re-signing with him.  I don’t feel like he has made us a priority.  He’s only brought through about 4 clients of his own, all the others have been with other realtors.  He doesn’t always call to let me know someone is coming to look at the house, so I have a chance to tidy up.  I also don’t think he has been at this real estate business that long, so he doesn’t really know what to do in the market as it is now.  We are hoping for things to look up after the first of the year.

As for the construction on the new house, the framing is finished and the roof is on.  Ray has contracted for the windows and they will be going in later this month.  We are  looking for a front door.  It looks great.  I will try to post some pix if I can remember to take the camera down with me the next time I go down. Ray has been in the process of wrapping the house in Tyvek paper to protect the exposed wood from the elements, especially through the winter.

We have finally sold our 5.25 acre parcel, so that money will be a big help to move things along a bit.

Ray told me the other day that if we had had the money up front, our house could have been sheetrocked by now.  DANG!  He knows this because there is another house under construction across the street from us who started at the same time, but now is sheetrocked.  I don’t want to hear about it…!

Ah well, there is a reason we are still supposed to be here. Wish I knew what it was so I would know how much longer we have.  Just have to sit tight and be patient.

Whining?

I haven’t blogged here for awhile, mostly because there is not much happening on the home-selling front. People say the market is slow-I say the market is dead! It’s funny, we go 3 weeks without a single prospect coming through the house, and then suddenly a flurry of activity. I don’t know whether it’s because interested parties come in drips and dribbles, or that our realtor simply decides to get busy occasionally, so we think he is doing his job. It doesn’t really matter, at this point I figure we are here until the spring because the kids are in school and I don’t want to switch schools mid-year. That could change, but I don’t see it happening any time soon. We did have a couple come through last week and our realtor told me that they were very interested. Have we seen a formal offer yet? Nope! See, isn’t this fun?

As far as the home-building is going, the house looks wonderful. It is almost completely framed, and when I was last there last week, they were framing the upper deck and starting to put on the roofing materials. It is fun to see it taking shape and imagining ourselves actually living there. I just can’t get too excited because I have no idea when we will actually be able to move in.

It has also been brought to my attention that I am “whiney” in my blogs. Well, excuse me! I kinda thought a blog was a place you could mull things over, lay out feelings, give info, and yes, sometimes vent. What I thought was venting, someone else thought was “whinning” (her spelling, not mine.) Hey, nobody has to stay around for the venting. Part of selling a home, building a home and moving is emotion. All of these activities involve a lot of frustration, disappointment, and patience, as well as excitement, creativity, and hope. I can’t be Miss Sunshine all the time, especially if things are not going particularly well at the moment. If I offend you when I am laying it on the line, then MOVE ON! Nobody invited you to this party; you can leave at any time.

Okay, moving on. In the meantime, the fall colors are in full bloom and when we move, we will be in the midst of color this time of year. So exciting, since fall happens to be my favorite season. Mt Loafer is a blaze of color and that will be my view from my window when I am in my sewing room creating quilts. Lucky me! Don’t even get me started on the view out the back: all of the valley at our feet. WOW. I don’t know how I will ever be able to get anything done-I’ll just want to sit and look out the window.

Some Progress

Well, there may not be much happening on the home selling front, but the home building is going lickety split.  Both basement and main floor are framed and enclosed. The cement on the porch will be poured today.  The roof should be going up next week.  Then we will have to stop because of a lack of funds until either our lot or house sells. But it’s nice that it got this far.

It’s nice to see a physical manifestation of what I have only been seeing on paper.  I’m not good at spacial imagination.  I can’t see something flat on paper and see the 3-D image in my mind, so it is nice to actually see where the walls, windows, doors, spaces and floor and ceiling are.  It’s going to be big.  I have an awesome view of Mt. Loafer from my sewing room on the front of the house, but it is nothing compared to the view out the back of the house.  All of Utah county at our feet.  WOW!  I was afraid that we would not be high enough to get all the view.  We may have to top a few trees, but not cut any down.

As far as the selling of this home, it is slow, slow, slow.  We had two prospectives through last Wed. but nothing else in the week since.  There must not be anybody buying right now.  We will very probably go an entire week without any looky-loos.  Doesn’t really bother me, less work to do.  The boys start school next week, so we will be firmly ensconced here until next May.  Hopefully when we put it back on the market next spring, things will have improved a lot.