Thursday, May 29, 2014

If All Goes According to Plan,...

...Castle Erickson will have a new owner on July 11. Acceptable terms were reached late yesterday evening, and contracts were signed this morning.

The funny thing about that is my colleague in the next office has had his house on the market for months with a realtor and no nibbles. I posted my house on Zillow under their "Make Me Move" option not too long ago and have sold it ahead of him. Ain't technology great?

It wasn't all peaches and roses though. I had a few realtors email me wanting to list it for us. Thanks, but no thanks. Back in March, we had a family come look at it. They apparently lost interest. Then, a week and a half ago, a realtor emails me and tells me he was a buyer who wants to see the house "right now". Right now turned into a few days because of family commitments (Niece Juju's college graduation and departure to a foreign land) and my business travel. The buyer and his girlfriend/fiance saw it, loved it and gave us an offer over the holiday weekend. A little back and forth over sales price, and we finalized the deal.

The good news for us is that this is an "as is" deal. In other words, we are giving up a little on the sales price in exchange for not having to finish painting, flooring, etc. and spending the money associated with those tasks. On his end, he gets a smoking deal on a house in a good neighborhood that he plans on redoing anyway.

The Queen and I are excited and looking forward to our adventures as temporarily homeless people. The plan is to sell what we can, trash what we must and donate what we can't sell and don't want to keep. Those things we will be keeping will go into climate controlled storage while we decompress from paying for our own prison home ownership, pay off some debts, hoard some cash and generally enjoy life for a while.

In the near term, we will be camping out with family while we scope out locations for rental property in the general vicinity of my office. Chances are good that we will wind up somewhere in Collin county since we both agree that we have no desire to live in Dallas county or on the other side of downtown Dallas from my office. The current search area is roughly bounded by I-35E to the west, 190/George Bush Turnpike on the south, Texas 78 on the east and US 380 on the north. We may fudge a little on the northern and eastern boundaries a little, but I refuse to go further south or west.

Renting will be a temporary solution while we decide whether we want to buy land and build or just chuck it all and become nomads living out of a yurt or a fifth wheel.

Right now...that yurt is mighty tempting.

In the meantime, anyone who wants to go dumpster diving through a few households worth of stuff...feel free to drop me a line.

6 comments:

  1. If you have a garage sale, post dates. I will swing by.

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    1. JPD, The Queen is in charge of planning and execution. I will try to post details if/when that happens. If I had my druthers, I'd just back the truck up to Salvation Army and be done with it.

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  2. I hear Garland is a nice place to live, lol.

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    1. GG, I know some folks who live there. Unfortunately, it falls almost entirely outside the search area and has the added stigma of Dallas county.

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  3. Daddy H and Queen - we did up our house in the city as best we could, listed it ourselves and sold it to the first people who came to our first open house. we got full asking price and the kids loved our property. it sounds like you had a similar sale and for that i am glad!

    +1 for the yurt. i love yurts!

    much love to you and all of yours! your friend,
    kymber

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    1. kymber, thanks. We didn't get "full asking price", but I feel like we got a good price. We just weren't getting any traction getting the paint and tiling done. Part of that is my fault, part is work commitments, part is just life. I have resolved going forward to hire out the big projects and only do one small project at a time so that I don't wind up being overwhelmed by project ADD.

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