As many of you who know me have figured out...that story was autobiographical. I don't have Darly in the story as she just didn't fit without making it a whole bunch longer.
When we put our house on the market, our next door neighbor had also put his up for sale too. He was desperate to move as he had a new job offer and needed to move and buy a new house in their new town...so he hired a realtor. Their house was built really weird so their asking price was $20K less than what we were asking. When you walked into neighbor's front door you entered a "great room" that was Living room, Dining room and Kitchen all in a row...then off to your left was the hallway and stairway to the basement which "killed" about 8 feet square worth of space. Both homes were roughly the same square footage with pretty much the same features.
DH insisted on trying to sell our house ourselves as he hates Realtors with a bloody passion and thinks they're akin to lawyers. (My apologies to any Realtors & lawyers out there who happen to stop by...why aren't you working? ;) )
So we got a lot of folks who came to see our neighbor's house (especially on open house days) who asked to see our house too. They would look at neighbor's house and say YUCK and see our house for sale and look at the price and say YUCK! They of course had no intention of buying our house as they were looking $20K less. So that's where the lady with the grubby toddler comes in.
The neighbor ended up selling his home by owner and we of course had to hire a realtor because we had to move...but it didn't matter to us how long it took to sell. As it happened as soon as we signed the paperwork with the realtor and left town the next morning, he showed the house to a military couple who were moving in. They put in an offer the day after we left town while we were driving through Idaho & Oregon. DH called MIL from the airport in Seattle and she told him that she had accepted the offer on our behalf, I think the offer was about $2K less than we asked.
We live close enough now that if we really wanted to we could drive north for 2 hours and go see our old house. I would like to do that some day.
I love going to visit the houses I used to live in, especially where I was a kid. And there are plenty of those houses in my life.
ReplyDeleteI guess it matters if you are visiting a house that you lived in when you were a child (for some reason those houses look smaller than we remember) or if you are looking at a house that you lived in as an adult.
ReplyDeleteWe have been fortunate to have been able to visit the house where we lived before this one. I say fortunate, because we really liked what the woman did with the house, other than cutting down the fruitless mulberry tree that was in the front yard (grrrr).
Miss Renee - fank you for the purrfday wishes and I hope your ham dinner was delicious!! - Miles
ReplyDeleteNot sure I'd want to go back and see my old house if I were you guys... you'll have to let us know if you do!
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