Selling the House

Feeling like a Tree

by Freedom on August 20, 2012

This is a post I wrote about a year ago but never posted.  I want to share it today to show you the spot we were in last year to contrast to where we are today.

Trees have it pretty good.  Before they are born, the tiny seed scopes out a good spot; a nice little spot with some distance between him and his future neighbors, but not too far away where he’ll be all by himself.  He needs a place that will meet his survival needs, providing plenty of water and sunlight.

Once he begins to sprout and grow, he doesn’t have many worries.  With proper sunlight and water, the tree is free to grow and mature.  He gets to just sit and soak in the sunlight like a vacationer on a remote beach.  All is peaceful in the forest.  He is surrounded by friends and family who proudly watch his progress.

Life is good, surrounded by friends and family, the rich sun shining down and feeding his needs, the cool water and rich soil filling his roots with nutrients.  He stands tall and relishes his life.

All is wonderful except for one detail.  He can never move.  His entire life is spent in rooted to that one spot, never having an opportunity to move about and experience the sights and sounds of the world.

I’m feeling a little bit like that tree.  My life has been good, and all my needs are met.  I have the standard American dream.  I am successful by most standards.  I have a beautiful house with a big yard and a swimming pool.

Yet, I’m feeling rooted by this house.  I’m unable to move about as I’d like.  It’s holding me back from experiencing more of this world.  Many people happily set their roots in one spot and never leave.  They buy a house, raise their kids in that house, and eventually die in that house.  They are like the tree, spending their entire life in one spot.

We really do have more freedom than a tree though.  We have the ability to move about if we choose to.  We voluntarily plant our roots, but we could just as easily move to or visit new places.  We don’t need to be tied down; we don’t need to stick our roots in a single location.

We are beginning to uproot.  We have plans to do more, to see more, and to experience more.  More life, more events, more activities, and more places.  I want to be more like those trees in the Lord of the Rings that can pull up their roots and move about whenever they feel like it.  We’ve started the process by purging all the extraneous and useless items from our life.  We have a little ways to go still, but I have high hopes for a future with more freedom to move about, less encumbered by the roots of a house.

Do you ever feel rooted?  What do you do about it?

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Is This a Good Time to Sell a House?

by Freedom on March 13, 2012

I had a comment recently that deserves a some more attention.

I can understand you wanting to have the freedom to travel, but is now a good time to try and sell your home with the market being so depressed?

This is a great question and one we spent a lot of time considering before deciding to go through with the sale of our house.  The housing market is the lowest we’ve seen since I can remember.  Most houses around here are selling well under what they sold for even 10 or 15 years ago. To answer the question of when to sell, we must ask another question:

Did you buy your house as an investment – or as a place to live?

The answer to this simple question will dictate the best time to sell your house.  If you bought it as an investment, you will sell your house at a point when it is profitable to do so.  If you bought your house as a place to live, you will sell your house when it no longer meets your needs.

We bought our house as a place to live.  We liked the location, we liked the layout, and we enjoyed it for many years.  Eventually, that house no longer suited our needs.  Life changed and those change made our idyllic home less so.  While living in that house we gave birth to our daughter.  I became unemployed and later found a job with a longer commute.  The cost of utilities, taxes, gas, and groceries went up.  Many things changed.

Our home no longer suited our needs and desires so we sold it in a down market for less than we originally paid for it.

Now we have a new place to live that is meeting our current needs and desires.  We live closer to work, closer to family, and closer to the weekend activities that we enjoy.

I have mentioned before that this move from a large house to a smaller apartment has freed up time and money, which allow us to travel more, satisfy more of our wants, and be more generous with our giving.

The Question of Timing

The investment vs. place to live existing on a continuum.  We answered the question of when to sell based on extremes.  If you buy a house as an investment then you sell your house at the point when you can make the most profit.  If you buy your house as a place to live then you sell it as soon as it no longer meets your needs.  Since money does play a big part in home buying, the timing of the sale lives somewhere along the continuum.

Naturally we buy a house hoping we can one day sell it and make a little something, while also satisfying the need for a place to live.  The timing of the sale depends on where you fall on that continuum and how much time you have available.

Our daughter was five years old when we listed our house for sale.  Time flies when you are watching your child grow up.  We desired to make changes quickly so that we can maximize the experiences we provide our daughter before she matures into adulthood.

When I thought back to my own childhood, my fondest memories were our family vacations.  The down economy not only affected the value of our house, but also affected our ability to produce these types of memories for our daughter.  The ability to create fond memories through rich experiences became a priority for us.

How much time were we willing to give up while sacrificing these memory making events in order to make a little more money on our house sale?  The answer for us was very little.  We had no clue as to how long it would take for the housing market to turn around, and we had already given up too much time in figuring out what we wanted and what was important to us, and then in the resulting purge of the stuff that didn’t support our goals and desires.

We changed our house because it suited our current life situation, and so for us, now is a good time to sell a house.

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We Listed our House Today!

by Freedom on October 28, 2011

We listed our house today.  We began this journey just over a year ago.  The journey to this point involved decluttering and purging our lives of items that just sat around taking up space and not being used.   Last year we held a big garage sale and sold almost everything that had not been used within the past six months.  Now, our closets are no longer stuffed to overflowing, our kitchen cabinets are not packed full of dishes that never get used, and we feel generally lighter.

Our plan from the beginning was to see if we could get rid of enough stuff/junk to move from our four bedroom, three bath house into a two bedroom apartment.  After our big purge, we felt this goal was achievable.  The only thing that really stood in the way was a remodel of our bathroom shower that had already started.  That project took a really long time because we were trying to pay cash for most of the work.  That project completed over the summer.

Again we hesitated, as by this time our daughter had already started kindergarten.  She has a great teacher in a good school and has already been making friends.  For my wife and I, it’s easy to uproot our lives to move across town, but it’s more difficult for us to uproot the life of our daughter.

We spent some extra time researching school districts and have found an area where we’d like to live.  Our first choice apartments were really awesome apartments, but they were in a really poor school district.  The school is currently B rated according to the state, but GreatSchools.org rated them a 3 out of 10.  The same held true for any of the areas that were really close to my work.

We looked a little further away at our second choice area which is about 15 minutes from work.  Here we have two choices for apartments.  One is a fairly standard apartment layout with three story buildings and outside stairs and breezeways.  The other is a super nice apartment building that was initially intended to be condos.  These are more of an urban style with an attached parking garage and swipe key entries to interior hallways.  The nicer ones also come with a higher price tag.

The good thing about this area, though, is the A rated schools that GreatSchools.org rated 9 out of 10.  Also they have swing sets on the playground which was a huge selling point for our daughter.  It seems most schools do not have swing sets anymore.  With two possibilities for good apartments in a great school zone, we have finally settled on our target area.

Over the past month or so, we have been in contact with a realtor that we found through Dave Ramsey’s Endorsed Local Provider program.  The idea behind this program is that realtors are vetted by the Dave Ramsey team.  They are supposed to be teachers in that they will walk their clients through the process step by step and help them understand the process.  I have found this to be true with the realtor we selected.

Yesterday we signed the papers with our realtor, and our house will officially be on the market today.

It is exciting and scary all at the same time!

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