We have known that we would be selling our house for several months now. That wasn't always the plan--for many years, James had been planning to attend law school at BYU. That was the plan when we bought our house, thinking we would be here for 5 years or more, for school and then possibly for the beginnings of a local career. Of course, that all changed when James decided to apply at the Top 10 schools, and our entire life plan shifted course.
It was only two and a half weeks ago that James officially declared his intent to attend Duke University. Duke has been our top choice all along, but it really came down to scholarships. Fortunately, Duke offered James a substantial scholarship, the best offer that he received. (Made the choice very easy!) Once we knew for sure where we would be going, we decided to proceed with plans for the house.
We met with our realtor, Amy Laster-Haynes, for the first time on March 24th, two weeks ago yesterday. She came highly recommended by our friend and loan officer, Brother James Sly, and we immediately liked her a great deal. She was professional and upfront with us, which we appreciated.
My greatest concern about the sale of our home was the timing. We don't plan to move until July, so I was worried about listing our home too soon, and being forced to move out early, and probably have to move twice. But on the other hand, we didn't want to still be trying to sell our home after moving to North Carolina, with the hassle and financial strain that would bring.
With all this in mind, Amy recommended listing sooner rather than later. Her reasoning was that we could probably work out a later closing or a rent-back situation with potential buyers, and furthermore, she believes that a lot more houses will be listed in the next several months, and having more competition on the market would make our house harder to sell. After considering the matter, James and I decided to proceed.
We spend the week preparing the house. James actually went to Durham that weekend, so my awesome parents came over and helped me clean and finish a couple of little fixes around the house that needed to be done before listing the house. To our surprise the For Sale sign went up Saturday afternoon--Amy apologized for that later, as it wasn't supposed to have gone up until Monday. We definitely got questioned at church on Sunday!
On Monday, Amy's professional photographer came and took pictures of the house. They turned out AMAZING. You can check them out here. I was so pleased--having spent quite of bit of time looking at houses for sale in Durham, I have come to appreciate what a difference good photos make in the desirability of a home.
Tuesday saw the actual listing of our house. Our house was officially for sale! We had our first showing scheduled that evening, though it later got postponed until Wednesday.
A big surprise came at 9:00am on Wednesday--our first offer! We hadn't even shown the house yet! But it turned out to be a lowball offer--Amy believed they were investors, probably planning to rent out the property. It was a cash offer, but that wasn't nearly enough of an enticement to accept $10,000 below what we had asked for. Amy said to wait to reject it until that evening--we had two showings lined up already, and she hoped to use this offer to put a little pressure on them.
We ended up having FOUR showings that first day. James and I spent the morning cleaning and preparing the house, and then vacated for the afternoon. Amy texted a few times, and she seemed very hopeful about the interest shown, and so we waited with great anticipation.
Amy called us at about 8:00 that evening--with TWO more offers. The first (and lower!) of the two was $5,000 over our asking price, although asked us to pay $7,000 in closing costs. However, the big thing with this offer was that the seller was willing to delay closing for 40 days, and then rent back to us for 60 more days, which gets us to the middle of July--about as good as we could have hoped for!
The second offer was a full $10,000 over our asking price, with the more typical $4,000 in closing costs. However, there were two major issues with this offer--first, they wanted to close and move in as soon as possible. Second, Amy expressed her concerns about our house appraising for anything near this high, a very valid concern.
Amy asked us to sleep on it, and let her know in the morning how we would like to proceed. We talked about it, but it was a pretty clear choice for us. We texted her in the morning with our intent to accept the first offer. Amy was really happy--she said that many sellers only look at the dollar signs, and she was glad that we had listened to her cautions and all. For me, the bigger dealbreaker was the timing. Being able to stay in our house until July makes all the difference in the world for me!
We went back and forth a couple more times with the buyer with some addendums, but later that day, we got a signed acceptance back--we were officially under contract!
Now we are in the midst of a three-week due diligence period, while the buyer has time to get a home inspection, the appraisal, etc. We've got our fingers crossed that all that goes smoothly, and that we get to closing without any major hiccoughs. Still, it's a pretty big relief to have reached this stage with as much ease as we did. Now we're just waiting with eager anticipation until our trip out to Durham in May, to search for our next home!
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