Altoona, IA - SOLD

Well, as I mentioned in a previous blog, we had gotten an offer but it was much lower than we thought the house was worth. We countered, not expecting much since we countered very close to our original price. But, heavens, she countered again, but she was still so far off. Meanwhile the buyer’s real estate agent is giving us whole lots of hooey about how the price per square foot was so much more than some other townhomes. Well, yeah, of course, it’s a much better townhome. Honey crisp apples cost more than red delicious, a Jeep costs more than a Chevy Lumina. Come on. But that’s probably just his shtick to convince us to lower the price.

Finally we said ‘no’ to one of her counters and thought that was that. She had come up but we were still $6000 apart and we weren’t coming down. We were ready for our next showing and our agent was scheduling another open house. That night, we heard that she had magically realized that she should offer $6000 more and we accepted. In the end, she came up $12,000 and we went down $2000. Pretty good ratio.

Now, the original paperwork was drawn up for a closing on July 2. The offers and counter-offers took 5 days but we didn’t think about changing the closing date. Oops. Will we be ready by 7/2? You bet, we’ve got to be. Luckily, we’re already in our RV with all our stuff so that piece is done. We’ve already gone through the house to decide which things we’re keeping and which we’re selling and which go to Goodwill.

Here’s the question: why are some of the things we use daily (like our dishes) going into the trash because they are not good enough for giving away? Huh? And, they’re fine Corell, what could be better? We got them our first year of marriage, which dates them pretty old, like 1974 but we’ve been using them since. Which means that they have had some time to get worn around the edges, kind of like their owners. But, they are going to be consigned to the trashbin of history in this go-round.

We’ve been spending our time at the house packing. But age has changed our modus operandi: we used to use mis-matched boxes from the liquor and grocery stores, newspaper from the stoop and whatever tape we had. Now, we’ve gone official:

        I bought bubble-wrap

        china plate foam pockets

        newsprint, without the print

        66 qt matching plastic containers with lids

       

Nothing like age to make us more official packers. We’re even going to hire some movers.

But there’s nothing to make this less of a chore. Although, a self-inflicted chore, it is a chore non-the-less. If anyone wants to volunteer to do it for us, we’d not turn you down.