Home Sweet New Home

After some deliberation, soul-searching, cost analysis and prioritizing, my wife and I decided a few months back to sell our old house and look for a smaller, less-expensive model in a more convenient location. While we loved our home, which was relatively maintenance-free and on a quiet country road, there were some drawbacks:

• At 1,650 square feet, it was just too big for two people.
• It was seven miles from pretty much any chore that needed to be done. That doesn't sound like a lot, but it adds up and it makes any simple errand at least an hour time commitment.
• While the seven miles was a bikeable distance, I wanted to be close enough to my workplace to have a carbon-free commute regardless of the weather.
  
• The mortgage was just large enough that it was difficult to get ahead with money. We finally determined that our cash was not being spent in proportion to our priorities.
  

Our initial plans called for us to list our house on May 1st, when the snow is gone and people are out looking for houses. As it turns out, at the end of March we found just the perfect house to buy:


This house isn't as much of a looker as our last one, but it did have it's plusses:

• At 1,300 square feet, it is still probably too big, but a much more appropriate size.
• It's 1/2 mile from the office, meaning I can walk to work every day. It's no more than a mile to almost all downtown amenities.
  
• It was listed for quite a bit less than we were selling for. Because we had a fair amount of equity in the last house, we were able to cut our mortgage by more than half (along with gasoline savings of probably 75%).
  

We were nervous about selling in a down market, but we were pretty committed to the new house. It was the right house in the right location. And our broker was pretty confident that our house would sell, because it was so beautiful on the inside. So we ended up making an offer on the new house, contingent on our current house selling, and listing ours a month earlier than expected.

Then....nothing. Not one peep. We knew it would be slow, but we were a bit surprised to hear nothing. Perhaps our expectations were unduly influenced by the fact that our house before this one sold, at listing price, in five days. That was in 2001. The market was better then. We spruced up the curb appeal just as soon as the snow allowed us, but we couldn't get anybody inside.

We were getting nervous, because it had been four weeks and our 45-day window on the new house was starting to close, when we made the decision to lower the price by a fair amount (~4%). This was a Thursday. The next day, we had two calls scheduling showings. The next day, we were under contract. Probably for less than we could have made if we didn't have a ticking clock, but for more than we originally thought we would list for. So we were happy with the result.

On May 30, all the real estate changed hands and we moved into our new home.

And we love it here. The house was built in 1974, and it's pretty much all original materials. So updates are in order - all the walls, all the floors, all the appliances need to be changed. (We've already installed new appliances.) And there were a lot more little things needed to bring it up to date (apparently the idea of venting moisture outside was novel back in 1974, for example). We've done quite a bit already, which I will detail in the next post, and there are a lot of major changes in store. We plan to do this the right way, with an emphasis on energy efficiency and sustainability, so it might take longer and cost more than we would have considered ten years ago. But it's worth it to do the right thing, and to have a house that we can really be proud of.

More to come...