Joe and I were happily surprised when our beloved friend and Realtor scored us an amazing deal on our first home in our dream town. It had everything we wanted! Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, a huge open kitchen, and a large yard for our future kiddos. It wasn't until about year two, while nearing the end of my first pregnancy, that we started to notice a few things that we were not too excited about. The master bedroom is on the bottom floor, while the two others are on the top. We have been told we will like this separation when our boys are older, but as of right now, I hate it. We are all cramming into the two upstairs bedrooms because I just can't get comfortable with sleeping on different floors.
We have also realized how important an actual laundry room is to us. Our current laundry situation consists of schlepping our baskets of dirty clothes down the stairs and out into the garage, where our washer/dryer buts up to our over-sized truck, making it impossible to open the door to the dryer all the way. I always drop clean clothes onto the dirty garage floor, and I hate that I have to sort the laundry in our hallway leading to the garage. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter, and folding everything requires taking up our living room, and then schlepping everything back up the stairs.
These things might not seem like big issues, but there are a couple of, more frustrating parts, that have clenched our hopes for a new place to live. The street we live on is lovely, and has a cute park just two blocks away, but it is also a through street for people trying to avoid lights. At peak commute times, we see car after car barely slow for the three stop signs that are within our view. I have seen countless children in scary situations because people go too fast and don't stop at the corners. It's scary.
Obviously, this is a huge issue for us, but the biggest deal breaker is the living space. Our bedrooms are all a great size, but our living room is quite small and is organized in such a way that it's difficult to arrange furniture. We want to have celebrations and family/friend gatherings in our home, but we have never felt comfortable doing that here. It's just too tight of a fit.
When we heard that the housing market had changed drastically from a stagnant market to a great sellers market, we contacted our trusted Realtor and set up a meeting to discuss the specifics (what would be required of us, what we would list the house for, how long it might take, etc.). We were shocked to hear how much value our home had gained in just a year and a half-we had checked in previously and were told we would lose quite a bit of money at that time.
After a couple of weeks of discussion between Joe and I, we decided that this was the time. We believed that our flexibility, having the upper hand as a seller, and the potential profit, were all too good to pass up. Although we wanted to sell, we felt no rush. We are not to the point of feeling like it's a necessity yet, but we know that day is coming. We thought this situation would help keep our stress levels at a minimum (more on that later). So, to finally get to the point, we put our house on the market the end of July.
The process has been stressful, exciting, scary, interesting, and a definite growing experience for our family (and that's just in the first month). Future posts on this subject will include: preparing our house for the market, the selling process, packing with kiddos, any snags that we have/will hit along the way, finding/living in a rental, and in a year or so, the buying process. It's a long road with a lot of steps, but we have a lot of support from our family, friends, and our amazing Realtor.
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