A couple of posts back, I mentioned that we were starting to get serious (finally hallelujah) about putting our house on the market. Well, I'm pleased to say that we're making actual progress in that direction.
First, I researched some real estate companies here in town. I know at least a half a dozen people who are realtors and BH knows a realtor or two as well. But we agreed not to go with someone we know personally for several reasons, the biggest of which is the fact that we want this whole process to be a business transaction/relationship.If we went with a friend as our realtor, it could get messy. Anyhoo, we decided to go with a locally-based agency and set up a meeting with a guy who specializes in our part of town. Let's call him "Tom" even though that's not his name but it's what BH insists on calling him, which is really confusing. I spoke with Tom on the phone and covered some preliminary stuff, and then we set up a time for him to come see the house and speak to us both. Because I'm a genius, I scheduled our meeting with him on a Friday right after our housekeepers had come, so our place looked pretty great. We walked him around, inside and out, and pointed out upgrades and work we'd put into the house along with areas of concern. He liked what he saw and said, "I'd show this house in five minutes," which made me nearly burst with pride. Tom is cool. He doesn't seem like a schmaltzy used-car salesman type. He loved on our pets and we talked music and kids (he's got two young ones). Plus, he seemed smart and had really done his homework on our neighborhood. He had a couple of suggestions for us to do to get it staged and photo-ready, but (thankfully) nothing too major. He told us he'd call us on Monday with a suggested listing price, and we could go from there.
The following Monday (which also happened to be my birthday...43...yee fucking haw) rolled around, and he called just like he said he would. His number landed exactly where I was hoping it would, and so we are definitely going with him and his agency to list.
Since then, BH has been working his adorable booty off doing projects around the house--inside and out. As I type this, he's painting the dadgum kitchen--taking it from a bright, cherry red to a cool, pale gray. We're also painting the front door (going from white to terracota) and doing some other tweaks here and there. I think the next BIG thing we'll do will be move some of our stuff to storage in order to declutter a little bit.
Crazy, but exciting.
On my end, I've created this "New House Scorecard" spredsheet that has a list of subjective criteria (ex. "Style of home") that can be rated on a scale of 1 to 5 and then more objective stuff (ex. His/Hers Closets in Master) that is given a point value like +10 points the house has it, -10 if it doesn't. The moer important the item is, the higher the point value. Dorky? Yes. But I'm hoping that it will help us when we start looking for a new place in earnest.
The thought of a new house--that we purchase together--makes me all tingly.
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