Our old house is sold… FINALLY!!

It has really been a rough last few months on the stress spectrum.  Not sure how many of you are aware, but April and I decided that it was time to move into a bigger place.  We have three kids, and our boys have been sharing a room.  Not a big deal, really, but we knew they would not want to share a room until they were in the teens.  Also, since we home school, we thought it would be good to have a room that we could dedicate to that instead of using our back room which was a main part of our living space. 

So we went looking, and we were expecting to buy a lot and start building.  Instead, we found a spec home that was very nice and had a bunch of upgrades (granite counters, tile in the bath, kitchen, and breakfast room, sprinkler system, sodded back yard, etc.).  We decided it was exactly what we wanted, but the timing was not what we were expecting.  Because it was a spec home, they would only give us 60 days to close, which meant we  had to sell our home in 60 days or risk carrying two mortgages.  Not a good idea.

But the house was great, and we were really talking the builder down a lot on the price.  We knew we would not be able to build a new house with all the same upgrades for anywhere near what we were getting the spec home for.  It was really a good deal, so we decided to look into the possibility of selling our home in 60 days.  We talked to a realtor (Remax Legends Ronnie and Cathy Matthews - I HIGHLY recommend them), and all the data looked great.  Houses in our neighborhood had been selling with no problem, most getting an offer well within 60 days (usually takes about a month after the offer to close).  In fact, there were only two that had been over 60 days, and many were under 30 days.  There had been some indication of slowing sales, but it still looked good.  So we pulled the trigger.

Well, long story short, it took about 70 days to get an offer.  And because we had built up this expectation in our minds that it would be a quick sale, we quickly got stressed as time went by.  And when we got into the new house and we still didn’t have an offer, it really kept us from enjoying the new house.  We kept having these bad thoughts about going months with two mortgages.  Not a nice picture.

But the good Lord provided, and we got an offer just a few days after we moved out.  And just last week we closed.  Then April came down stairs (yes, we have stairs now) yesterday and showed me the old mortgage account.  Balance=$0.  So sweet!

Mikey