Accepted an Offer on Our House

 

We put our house up for sale on Friday, March 7, 2014.  On Tuesday, March 18, 2014 we accepted an almost full price offer.  11 days.  That’s pretty fast in the real estate market, especially when it has been swinging back toward a buyer’s market.  So why am I not as excited as I should be?  Because I’m giving my only home to someone else.  The home that we built.  The home that we came home from the wedding to.  The home that we brought our puppies home to.  The home where we had and lost our baby boy.  This home has all our memories.

We were able to get an offer for only $2000 below our asking price within 11 days.  I’m very excited, and to be honest, I expected it. Our house looks amazing.  Once we cleaned it all up and got a lot of the clutter out, I loved walking through our house.  Our backyard is beautiful.  It’s on a prime lot in the neighborhood.  It’s a great location to Westgate (football and hockey) and across the street from Spring Training.  When I try to sell it this way, I ask myself why we are selling it?  Then I remember it’s because we don’t quite have enough space to grow a family in it.  And right now, housing prices are still low, but our house had gained value.  So it seemed like the optimal time for us to move so we can get more house and land in a location closer to family, and also still make money on our house.  Interest rates are still low as well.  But I do love our house.

After being very excited about the strong offer, and knowing how much this young couple liked it also, we accepted the offer and now just wait for the inspection and appraisal.  We shouldn’t really see any issues here since the house is only 4.5 years old.  But now I’m getting very sentimental.  We have so many memories there and it was such a good house to us.  I wish we could move a wall for a little more space and pick it up and place it closer to family.  But I can’t.  I know people move all the time, and I know I probably have more attachment than most people do…but it’s really hard for me to think about leaving our home and having someone else living there.

So last time I started putting together a Shutterfly book to record all the memories we had in our first home.  I want to remember what it looked like, but also everything that we accomplished while we were there.  Starting with buying the house and getting the keys, to getting married, bringing our puppies home, all our trips, the Tough Mudder, and the loss of our baby.  This way, we can always look back and see all that happened during those 4 years.

But I also know that as we start our family, we’ll create so many new memories in a new home.  And it would have been that much harder to leave this house if we had brought our baby home to it.  We should be able to have new memories pretty quickly at the new house.  And maybe we’ll be able to get a pool so Cinder can swim all day long.  A grassy area big enough for a swing set and the dogs to run around. A kitchen where we aren’t bumping in to each other when we’re both cooking.  Enough bedrooms to have 2 kids and an office.  And close enough to our parents so that they can babysit.  It’s a tall order, but I think we can find something that will be just as good to us now with these new needs, as our house was with our needs 4.5 years ago.

If all goes well, we’ll be closing just after Easter.  We’ll have to pack up our home and put it all in storage the weekend before that.  April 22 sounds so far away right now, but when I think about it (we have so much going on the next few weekends!) it really doesn’t give us very much time to pack up and say goodbye.  I’m going to miss our home so much, but I think it will take just as good of care of the new couple as it did us.  And a new home will fit our needs now and take care of us.