It's official! We're listing our house to sell.
MLS#: 201305411
I've been wanting to move for quite awhile; I just got Matt on board this month. Actually, when Matt and I were dating, I tried to move to the Portland area to be closer to him but then found out I couldn't move because of a tax credit I'd taken; I needed to live in that house until January 2012. That is why Matt ended up moving to Bend. Then we noticed that the vacant lots in our neighborhood (the streets right behind ours), that used to just be trees and brush and made it feel rural/forest-like to walk around, were being prepped to build after several years hiatus. All the trees have been leveled. The builders are already half done with two homes; we walked through since there aren't doors yet. They are tiny with tiny lots but they are new construction, which could be tough to compete with eventually. We love our private & quiet backyard (but it'll eventually be small for Carsen), we love the water feature Matt just built, we love the floors we installed, we love the jetted master bath Matt installed, we love that this was our first home together (even though it was also my first house by myself). But it's time for us to pick out something together, ideally our forever home, or at least 20-year, or 15-year, family home.
Plus our street is a weird hodge-podge of owners and renters and some nicer homes and some not nice homes. There was an open house down the street, which the only thing it has going for it is square footage. Once we saw that, we thought our house surely could be worth something now. We've been underwater for quite awhile but now with the market going up, we had a realtor walk through and she said she would list for $199,900-$209,000. I'd said if we could list for $200,000, then I'd do it. Maybe we should wait to see if the market goes even higher, but we've heard that there aren't a ton of competition for us. Our comparables we think we've got beat. The only downside is... in 2008, before I bought it as a foreclosure, it appraised at $250k; I always dreamed about holding onto it and making some good profit but... probably won't happen. As ours goes up, the houses we want to upgrade to move up as well.
We made so many improvements. At that price, we'll basically be breaking even. Oh well.
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| BEFORE: front, note the stairs |
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| NOW |
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| Ugly landscaping |
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| NOW |
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| backyard - that "hill" is actually a garbage pile |
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| chainlink fence through back |
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| NOW |
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| ugly tiles glued around fireplace; yucky carpet |
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| NOW |
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| master shower |
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| NOW |
The professional pictures are amazing!
So we're taking the plunge. It's supposed to be a buyers' market, but we've just looked through all the listings in our price range, looked at about 8 homes, and have only found one that we both really like... but... it doesn't have a master bathtub (which Matt wants, though we could probably put one in) and it doesn't have a family room (which I want) and it's only 1970 sq ft. We're sorta have slightly different priorities: Matt wants nice, upgraded, turnkey; I want more sq ft, bigger lot, family room. It's exciting and scary.
We had three showings of our house today. We'll see if we get any offers or hear any feedback. I just hope the driveway doesn't scare people away. It's only a problem to get up, due to ice, like 5 days out of the whole year. My biggest fear has been falling in love with a new home that we can't buy until we sell ours. Let's hope we can find something we love.
