On the market

Our house is on the market, and has been for about 45-days. In preparation for the sale we paid for new carpet throughout the house, and paid for paint in about a third of the house. Some would say that "they painted and re-carpeted the house", this statement is not true, I just paid professionals to do the tasks as painting is not a skill I'm efficient with. After said payments the house looks fantastic and is staged well for sale and I have to say it looks better than most of the houses I've viewed. I suspect the sale of our house is all about the bottom line and a lot less about the new carpet smell and fluffed pillows.

It has been frustrating from day one. The first part that we (and everyone else) went through is the agent contracts where you realize how much money is coming off the top in commissions. Six percent is a lot of money when it's coming out of your funds! However, I'm not aware of a reliable way around paying the agents so we're playing by their rules and rates. Perhaps CraigsList could be the answer?

The plus side of the situation is that we are selling our house because we want to. We are not selling because of getting laid off, or because of home equity loans for large TV screens in every room and chrome rims for the Hummer. Nope, we're doing this because we want to step up to a property with trees and a long driveway and maybe even some privacy.

I can't imagine what the situation would be like if we had to sell on a time deadline due to a job out of town, or a lack of cash flow, or to pay for iPhone monthly service. I guess we have got it easy - we're in the black and even if we drop the price by $50k, we're still in the black. Could be worse I guess.



*notice the cat door