Money for Nothing

A note that came from our realtor about the showing Wednesday morning. The deal was pretty much in the bag by then (we cancelled subsequent ones), but they came through and their realtor left the following feedback.

David & Liane,

Spoke with the Agent who showed your house Wed. am.  He said the house was Flawless!  He was Very impressed.  Figured it would sell fast.  He said it was at his buyers top of her list “BUT” she still has a house to sell.   Couldn’t really do anything just yet. 

Just thought you’d like to know. 

I guess it really is worth going through all the contortions to "create an illusion." I'll never fully understand the psychology of buyers -- it really is the same house, just polished up a bit. Presentation seems to matter. It can give you that last little edge you need.

Of course, at this point I am really feeling we may have left some money on the table...  Which, again, is sort of dumb psychology. First, there is no way to really know. Maybe if we'd asked $1000 more they would have walked, and maybe nobody else would have made an offer for a while. The agent told us it's harder to be in a strong negotiating position once your house has been on the market a few weeks, so you usually end up taking less. Makes sense on some level, but...there's always that little, cynical part of me wondering whether it's all just tactics to get the deal done so the realtor can move on to the next one. 


I know. I should just be happy/content it's done. I am. Let's move on. Inspection is next week, and assuming that goes well there are just a couple of other minor details before the closing on the 20th.

SOLD

Wow! We have a deal! That sure was fast. There are still a few details to sort out, but for all intents and purposes the house is sold. So fast it almost makes me think we left some money on the table, but no time to worry about that now. Now we have to figure out out to get completely moved in the next couple of weeks.

Yikes!

I'm accepting volunteers.

Steps

The crazy sign I had to make to explain how the steps from the closet up to the overhead storage area and attic work. It hangs just outside the door of the closet. Haven't had any comments about all that (positive or negative) yet. I guess no news is good news.

Scorecard -  There are currently two showings scheduled for today. So, in total we're at

• 4 new showings (counting today)
• 1 second showing
• Oh, and we have received one offer. The realtor and I are getting together today to write a counter offer for that. Their offer was pretty far below what I think makes sense so I'm not that optimistic about it.

Timing is Everything

Yesterday (Monday) I allowed and spent time in the morning to get the house close to ready for a showing, should one come up. Today I didn't. So, naturally, there's a showing today. I had to run home and get some things ready to go. In hindsight I probably will have to do this as a matter of course because my realtor thinks it's important to have as many lights on as possible. And there's no way I'm leaving all the lights on every day in the event there might be a showing.

Scorecard - This is the 6th day on the market, and our 3rd showing. Not sure how to count this one though, as it is a second showing for one of the couples who came through Saturday.

White Knuckle Run

Got up Saturday morning to an e-mail from the realtor about a proposed house showing later in the day. Nothing like a hard deadline to get the gears engaged. We were close enough to feel okay about doing it, but it would be so much better if we could wrap up a few things.

We managed to wrangle our friend Jim over with his truck to help move the desk and credenza out of the office, which also gave him an opportunity to look at our broken sump pump at the new house. He confirmed its demise, by the way.

Stress  --  Upon leaving to return home a second showing was offered, this one a half hour earlier than the first. The next few hours were filled with us frantically getting the last things ready. Ultimately we had to let the garage go. It never seemed to be a big concern of the realtor anyway. At one point I looked up and realized the first showing was 30 minutes away. We frantically buttoned everything up and left, passing what I'm sure was the first realtor on the road out of our subdivision.

Contrived -- I got a text from our realtor in the middle of all this to leave a note for the first showing to leave lights on for the later showing. This was a tactic to let both know there had been another showing. I did it, of course, but....it kind of reminds me of a lot of the decor things we've done. Most of them are more attractive than practical or realistic. They just look contrived to me. A little of this goes a long way in my opinion. A bit too much and I begin to wonder what's being covered up. Why are they trying so hard to sell me this. Still, it's a fine line, and a lot of it works -- can't ignore proven practices.

Scorecard -- The house has been on the market for three days, and we've now had two showings. Not a bad start. It will be interesting to see if there is any feedback from those. I'd love to hear if there are a couple of easy things we could address that would make it show better. See?! I'm sucked in to the process myself. HA!

We've Hung Our Shingle

The house is officially for sale. We still have work to do before it's ready to show, but we're taking a calculated risk that there isn't going to be much activity before next week since this is Easter weekend. So we still have a little time.

After this weekend the work on the new house must resume in earnest. People in the know are predicting that our house will sell within 30 days. Statistically a lot of houses in the area go within that timeframe (at least ones that are reasonably priced), but there's still a significant chunk of them that take longer. We'll see.

Sadly, by the time it's sold and everyone else makes their money off of it I will have netted a grand total of somewhere around zero dollars on the investment. I've been in that house for over 15 years and it's still not worth that much more than I paid. It's a combination of a slow -- yet stable -- real estate market in Fort Wayne, the fact that my township got annexed a few years ago (higher tax rate, compared to houses a mile away), and obviously the economy. I figured it would go for less than I wanted, but I had no idea how much less. Kind of a shame. I'd be better off if I had rented all these years.

Anyone need a nice house?

Displaced

My home is no longer my home. I still live and sleep there, but much of what made it my home is gone, or packed away. Inaccessible. It looks nice, but I feel like a fish out of water there. The preparations for listing it are nearly complete. The realtor is coming over tonight for a final look and to get papers signed.

I knew we'd have to make some sacrifices to get things looking the way they need to for listing. I've been surprised at the extent of it. I have vital clothes in bins under a bed. Everything is paired down to the bare, bare essentials.

As much of a drag as it is when taken to this extreme it is also probably good for us. We, like a lot of people, tend to keep too much stuff around. Forcing us to make decisions about what is really necessary will ultimately have been a useful exercise.

That said, it's going to be hard to live like this for very long. The cynical side of me wonders if this is all a part of a psychological process designed to mentally get the client (us) on the move -- a way to break down their resistance. After living like that for a while I imagine the motivation to just get it all over with becomes one of the overriding factors in making a decision. And this means you're more ready to accept lower offers, or otherwise compromise.

But that's just the cynical side of me.

Welcome to Being a Home Owner

I remember when I bought my very first home so many years ago. It was an exciting time of course. I remember cobbling together all the money available to make it happen. Within a week after I bought it the air conditioning conked out. $800 for a new compressor. It was a pretty big blow at the time, but I just had to find a way to make that work financially.

Well, the backup sump pump system in the new house ins't functioning. There is a battery backup system on it was well, along with a processing unit that evaluates its functionality. We had to disconnect the battery to silence the alarm. Not sure how much it's going to cost to get that straightened out. Compared to the $800 ding for a new home owner it won't be any big deal. Just kind of ironic.

And as for that $800 compressor. It's still functioning 25 years later (my mom lives in that house now).

Creating an Illusion

Meanwhile, back at the old house, work continues in earnest to get it ready to put on the market. We were supposed to pull that trigger yesterday, but alas we aren't ready yet. Just haven't had the time or the resources to get everything done. We did finally get our friend Jim out to take care of several items that needed to be repaired or otherwise addressed. There's been lots of painting, and LOTS of just getting stuff out of the house.

"You're creating an illusion," is what our friend Felicia tells us about this. She's an expert stager. A stager is someone who makes houses ready to put on the market. It's like being an interior decorator, but with a specific eye toward making a house look most sellable. Most things about this process I understand: get all of the clutter out and work to make it look roomy. Get really ugly things out. Get overly personal items out (family pics, etc.). Get anything too unusual or quirky out and replace with more traditional items. These are the basics, and we're doing all of that. But it goes so far...  After doing most of this we step back to look at our house and parts of it look almost barren, and much of it looks kind of boring. What's worse, however, is that we've removed so much (admittedly ugly) furniture that we no longer have any place to keep our clothes. We're probably going to go with some boxes under the bed and stuff like that.

It's no way to live. I don't feel any need to rush to sell this house. I like it. It's in a convenient location (for me at least), and with all of the remodeling in front of us on the new house there's just no hurry. But living out of boxes under the bed is going to put some stress on that situation.

What's really weird for me....is just how manipulative it all seems. I am in sales. I've been doing sales in some capacity for the past 30 years. I've seen it all in that time. While I've bought several homes over the years, I've never sold a home on the market before. It's mildly shocking to me how much thought and effort goes into "creating an illusion." It's no wonder buyers are so circumspect. They should be.

We Have Storage

That's one job completed. It aint that pretty, but it will do the job. Thanks to my brother Andy for a lot of hard work. In exchange for his blood and sweat I gave him my toilet out of the soon to be remodeled master bathroom.

A Week

Everything takes a week. There has been some movement on the process of getting the remodeling lined up. It's still painfully slow and cumbersome though. It seems that every little thing adds another week to it.

We may say, "what if we move this screw over here?"

"Well, let me look at that and get back to you next week."

Sigh.

There are basically two major and two moderate jobs in play right now: remodeling the master bath, adding a screened porch and new desk, redoing the floors upstairs, and new kitchen countertops (probably granite) and modifications to cabinetry. These are all going to be costly items so it's worth it to take our time and get it right, but wow does this stuff move slow.

Oops

Well, putting shelves and flooring in the attic did not go without incident. I knew my helper took a section of the pre-existing floor out to strengthen it, but as tired as we were that was not enough to stop me from reflexively stepping into that void when he asked for a tool that was on the other side. So I fell right through the floor/ceiling. Fortunately it was just over the garage. It will still have to be properly repaired though.

Fortunately my body will repair itself.

Storage

There's a decent amount of closet space in the house, but relatively little storage space for bigger items, boxes, and things you don't need access to all that often. The only place there is any appreciable amount of it is in the mechanical room, where a few shelves were installed. But it's only a fraction of what we need. Meanwhile the attic is big enough to build two more houses in. So we're working this week to build that out with proper floors and shelves.

These are the "before" pictures.

Looking west from attic entrance, showing the area over the hall and living room.

Looking south from attic entrance. The built up area in the lower left is the top of the master bedroom closet.

Looking west, showing area over hall and dining room or study. Note the goofy pvc pipe sticking up. It contains all of the phone, coax, and data cables that run from the mechanical room in the basement to all points in the upstairs part of the house. The only reason I can think of why they would have had it sticking up this far is to help keep it out of the line of fire for blowing in the insulation. But all of those cables should have been relaxed and not had that tension on them. Dumb. We'll have to try to fix that.

Hard to get perspective here, but it is about 20' up to the apex of the roof. Very large attic. Tempted to try to make livable space out of some of it. Maybe in another life.

Early Pictures

Posted the floor plan yesterday. Probably should post a few pics to go with it. More to come when I have time.

Floor Plan

I don't think I ever posted this.

The area in the top left corner is actually a deck, which will soon (hopefully) be turned into a screened porch. Out to the left of that will be the new deck.

We Have Internet

The cable guy came yesterday. I had arranged to go ahead and get internet turned on prior to activating phone and TV. Internet isn't truly required at this stage either except for the fact that my nephew Jeff is coming up later this week to configure all the network stuff. It will be easier to test everything with Internet working.

When the cable guy came to understand the scope of what he had to do he looked bummed. And I don't blame him. It was not going to be an easy install. At one point he said he had to return to his previous job to get a tool he left there. I figured he was probably headed back to the office to resign!

But he returned and dutifully crawled through the mud under the deck to get it done. He did sorta' take the easy way out by splicing into a cable that had already been run from under the deck to the mechanical room. We'll see how that works out. So far it works okay.

One more little thing checked off the list.

Meanwhile, there is a Technology Side...

Haven't talked about this much yet. In parallel with all of the thinking and changes relating to the physical properties of the house we (or in this case I) have also been wrangling with what to do from a technology point of view. There are two primary concerns:

1. We both like to watch TV. Just not the same things. I like sports. She likes....well, let's just say she likes a lot of shows that I suspect many of my friend's wives like. We need the ability to watch any of a few sources on any or all TV's in the house. And it needs to be easy.
2. We both use computers a lot. We need ready access from wherever we are in the house, or even immediately outside the house. These computer systems need a robust backup architecture, etc.

These two benign and normal sounding factors produce a nearly endless array of choices and technological challenges.

Take television. What is television these days? There are shows, movies, documentaries or educational programming, sports, and news. How is this media delivered?

• Old School: Pay the cable or satellite provider to beam you content.
• Pros: Generally reliable delivery of content with a known standard of quality (personal tastes notwithstanding).
• Cons: Expensive, somewhat inflexible, requires additional hardware to be able to watch content at convenient times (more expense), have to "deal" with stupid companies (providers).
• New School: Get it on the internet.
• Pros: Watch what  you want when you want it. Don't pay for anything you don't want. 
• Cons: Can still get expensive if you watch a lot. Quality often not as good as broadcast. Reliability also not perfect. Can actually be harder to skip the commercials than with a DVR/broadcast system. Many shows (especially sports) still unavailable.

Todays reality is that you need some combination both paradigms, and each of these two methodologies requires different infrastructure to pull off effectively. They each have different nuances to getting the most out of them, etc. As it stands right now it's necessary to build out the infrastructure on both fronts and then add hardware to integrate it all together. Further, even within something as straight forward as broadcast content there are several choices, each with their own pros and cons. And what is the best appliance for watching (or possibly even recording) internet content? There are a surprising array of choices. None an obvious winner on all fronts. Combine that with the fact that we hardly ever want to watch the same things, we (as mentioned above) need to be able to deliver any of this content to any of several screens in the house, in high definition, 5.1 surround (at least in a couple of places), with an ability to watch what we want when we want. And we need to a simple way to control all of this hardware. Wives aren't interested in patch bays, source select buttons, etc. And frankly neither am I for this application. We need to be able to pick up a remote in any room of the house and put what we want on the nearest screen with a couple of button pushes.

On to computers. We have several, plus iPhones and iPads, and who knows what the future holds on this front. Suffice to say we need robust networking throughout the house. We need access from anywhere. The house is big enough that one wireless router isn't going to cut it. We need to integrate a few of them. There are different speeds and formats one needs to be compatible with. And I like to provide separate wireless access for guests and their equipment (so that doubles virtually everything). Backing up of data on all machines is crucial. No excuse anymore for losing data when a hard drive goes belly up. Need a central storage location for items that may commonly be used on multiple computers such as music and video libraries, accounting software, photos, etc. Need a music and video delivery infrastructure. And all of this, at least where it crosses the moving line into entertainment, needs to be integrated with the A/V and remote control infrastructure.

All of this stuff is quite doable, especially since I have access to people who know a lot about it. The challenge is in the decisions pertaining to the best way to go about it. It's easy to say, "just run this wire there and you're all set." But in an existing house you can't always do that, so other creative solutions are needed. It all needs to be implemented in a way that's simple enough to be robust, but still flexible. And you need to be able to get in and make changes as technology and preferences change.

Had enough yet? There's more, but I'll spare you for now.