First offer... the highs and the lows...

Well, we were feeling pretty good about ourselves as the first offer was made on our house. Let me set the scene - it was Monday, March 17th -- 5:25 pm. The kids and I were settling down to our pizza bagel dinner (a staple with Frank out of town) and green milk (it was all I could come up with at the last minute for a little st. patty's day "fun"), when our realtor called and asked if a couple could come through for a second look . . . they would be there in about 20 minutes. Well, we had been home from school for a couple of hours and we had managed to ransack most of the rooms in the house - we had already played in (i.e. trashed) the basement, both of the kids bedrooms, the family room, and of course, the kitchen had been pizza bageled. Nathan is usually quite a disaster when anything with a red sauce is involved. Oh, and I should mention that I was already well into my "comfy clothes." I was proud of myself - I told the realtor we could not be out in 20 minutes - we would need more like 30-40 minutes. She agreed and the kids and I ate, cleaned up and packed up in the car with plenty of books to keep us occupied. (It was raining and getting dark - the usual going to the park wasn't going to work this time.) I thought we could drive to a gas station (far away), fill up, and return home to an empty house. By the time we had been driving around for about 10 minutes, the realtor called and said that since I "couldn't be ready on time" the people had stopped for dinner and they wouldn't even get to our house until around 6:45 pm -- ugh! I had to resort to one of my least favorite places - the library - I figured they're open late, gets us out of the rain, out of the car and the kids love running around in there. Ellie wasn't sure that we could go in because I was in my "jammies" -- so we had a little talk about the difference between jammies and comfy clothes - (It wasn't my best look, but hey...)

Long story, but in the end, they liked our house enough to make an offer (a low one!) We countered back and forth a couple of times and we were still $20,000 apart. Neither party was motivated enough to buy or sell. I guess we figure we have enough time at this point to be a little bit choose-y. The appraisers are still coming in to work up the buy-out offer. Maybe after we have that number, we will have a better idea about how low we can go on the sale price. the buy-out offer might be so low that we'll be begging the Fockers (that's what Frank calls them - the husband was a "male nurse") for their low-ball offer. We might not be done with them yet.
There conitunes to be "interest" -- we showed the house every day this week and 5 more times yesterday, so maybe someone else will want it, too.

Frank is going out to look at more houses this week in Omaha - trying to narrow it down for us to make a decision when we go out for spring break - ahhh, break! Seems so far away, still...
Probably won't update until we get back from our Omaha-gone-wild vacation -- (Tuesday, 4/1), but it should be a good one - complete with a play by play and plenty of pictures!

First Week on the Market

We have "survived" the first week of the house being on the market. There has been a lot of "acitivity" and "interest" but no offers yet. We have had about 12 or 13 "showings" and an open house that drew in 26 additional buyers. Apparently there was one open house-er that was not currently working with an agent, but was "very interested." (Maybe it was the fact that the house "smells like garbage" is what she liked the best...) :) We asked Sandy not to work as a dual agent, so she referred her to another agent and she thinks that we should be expecting an offer from her after she gets her financing in order. We are hopeful, but we're trying not to get too excited until we actually see an offer (and see what it is...)

We asked our realtor if any of our nosy neighbors came through the open house. She said that the only neighbor (that fessed up to being a neighbor, anyways) that came through was Rosemary. Rosemary and Tom are the older couple that live next door to us. They are really not the busy-body types. Apparently one of Rosemary's friends is looking to buy in our subdivision. How cute! I hope SHE buys it - then she can live right next door to Rosemary and they can have coffee together every day (I've got it all worked out!) -- Hey, but only if she pays a good price - no deals, even for friends of Rosemary! :)

All of the action on the house is certainly a good thing, but we are hoping that weekends in the future will be a little less "active." Between all of the hours that we had to be out of the house and the hours of grading that I brought home, it was not a very restful weekend, but productive, nonetheless. And I think amidst it all, Ellie still had a great birthday weekend (thanks to all of you - thank you for coming out to help her celebrate!)

Frank is going house hunting in Omaha tomorrow night - really, just looking at some of the houses that we've been admiring online. We'll see what they look like in person... a full report to follow!

Have a great week!

The Leave of Absence...

Just read the minutes from the school board meeting -- they approved my leave for next year! (Although they classified it as "family / maternity" leave -- family, OK -- maternity, not so much... :)
(Frank's not here so I thought I would share the news with you all...)
What a relief (any reason to come back to Chicago and family is a good one - even if it's WORK!) :)

The house must be on the market - a few cars driving back and forth in front of our house really slowly -- I should probably get out of the front windows in my sweats - they'll think it's some kind of slummy, run down joint...

More later this week (when the house is sold) - just kidding!

On the Market

Well, we have listed the house and it's officially "on the market." Spread the word - if anyone's looking for a cozy little place in EGV - there's one more for sale! The listing process is fairly painless, but a little crazy nonetheless. It's on the market "exclusively to Baird and Warner agents" for 24 hours, it will be in the MLS tomorrow night (Tuesday) and then there's the "brokers' tour" in Elk Grove on Thursday. Who can figure it out -- I guess it's technically on the market, but you won't find it on realtor.com until later in the week.

If anything, I will become more saavy with my cell phone. I promptly gave the realtor my cell number as the "best way" to get a hold of me. Then, after she left - I had Frank give me a refresher course on how to check my messages on the cell phone. Funny thing, as he was showing me how to check the voicemail (I really knew... it was more of a refresher course...) :) there was already a message waiting for me... from Frank - from January 31st! Timely.

And my new cell phone prowess was put to the test today - day #1. Our realtor was supposed to meet the photographer here this afternoon. As I was leaving school, I took out my cell phone (of course, school policy prohibits cell phones in the building). :) Sure enough, there was a message from the realtor (Sandy is her name -- I'll just call her that from now on - I'm sure she'll be blog worthy many times in the coming weeks / months...). Apparently she was having trouble with the set of keys that we gave her -- she couldn't get in the house to take the damn pictures. I'm still not sure if we gave her "bad" keys or if she just couldn't get them to work. In either case, she didn't get in and even my immediate cell phone message-checking could not salvage the situation. Oh well - we'll be "that house" on realtor.com with no picutres, at least for now. She said she was coming back on Friday (Frank is working from home that day, so maybe he can let her in... maybe). :)

The worst part of the whole thing is that I am likely going to give myself an ulcer from the constant straightening -- chasing the kids around picking up the play-doh so we can get out the puzzles. Getting out the swiffer after every meal (no, I didn't used to do that). Making the kids' beds everymorning (no, I didnt' used to do that either). Standing by with a clorox wipe so that when they brush their teeth and the little glob of toothpaste lands only sort of in the sink, I can wipe it up quick before it crusts over. I need to chill out a little bit, but I can't. I can just imagine the feedback - "the house is alright, but the diaper genie was ripe -- deal-breaker!"

I'll keep you posted. There should be asign in the yard before Ellie's birthday... (and an Open house on her birthday - lucky girl...)

Realtor #3

As you might remember, we "interviewed" 2 real estate agents that could potentially list (and hopefully sell) our house. The two numbers that they came up with were vastly different, so we were advised by the relo company to interview a third realtor. We were pretty nervous that the thrid realtor might agree with the "low" number from realtor #2, but we invited her over anyways - better to know the truth in advance than to be delusional and list our house at what we might WANT it to be worth... So, realtor #3 came in, took the same pictures, gave us the same talk about her marketing plan and everything her real estate company could offer that no one else's could. We listened, anxious for her to get to the bottom line -- the price tag! We were happy to hear that she agreed (more or less) with realtor #1, and we may not lose tens of thousands of dollars on this house after all. I mean, I know it's not sold yet, but at least the comparisons looked reasonable and more in the same ballpark as the first agent. In other (sort of unrelated) house news - the house across the street from us went on the market this week -- and it's a bank owned / forclosure situation going on -- apparently the place is a mess, but it is definitely "priced to sell" -- I am glad that the price tag on that house does not really influence the price tag on ours.
Now we just have to choose an agent - we hope to be listed by next weekend (something for me to blog about!)

Let's see, what else. We are tentatively planning to take the whole family out to O-ma-ma the first weekend of my spring break (like leaving on Saturday, the 29th and coming home on Tuesday, April 1st). Frank is going to try to preview some homes between now and then and hopefully we can make a final decision while we are there. We figure being there 3 days or so will give us enough time to hit the zoo or something with the kids and also to have some productive realtor time. We are only debating whether we should drive (ugh!) or fly (also an Ugh!) -- I mean, I'm sure the trip is painless either way - please do not be deterred from visiting! :)

Imagination Station update - Frank dropped off the check last week, so Ellie and Nathan are officially on the waiting list / registered for the fall - they (mostly ellie) are very excited about the "new school."

That's all for this week - hopefully the post next weekend will have a picture of the house with a sign in the yard (and a "SOLD" on top... ok, wishful thinking...)

More later -

More Realtors, More Preschools, ...

This week's news revolves mostly around realtor progress (or lack of) and preschool progress.
First, the realtors -- we had two realtors come in to do "reports" for the relocation company. They were both very different - and they came up with two totally different numbers for what they thought we could sell our house for. Of course, we would like to think that the "high" number is more accurate (but maybe that's because the "low" number was 10% LESS than what we paid for the house three years ago...before we did the addition.) I know that we bought in '05 -- when the prices were so inflated, but it's still depressing to think that the last three years in this house could set us back so many thousands of dollars... Both realtors were asked by the relo company to "re-do" their reports. The "high" realtor lowered her list price slightly (but kept the "sell" preice the same) and the "low" realtor has yet to turn in her new report. We don't like her - she is just not interested in our little house. I am trying not to get too stressed out about this whole realtor thing - the numbers that will really matter are the ones from the appraisals - those are the ones that determine the buyout offer from the relo company.

Now to the Omaha realtor -- Frank met with him last week. The good news is that the Omaha housing market IS just as bad as it is here (so whoever we buy from will be losing money on their house, too!). The realtor asked Frank what we "needed" in our house out there and Frank proceeded to list off a bunch of things that we absolutely could never afford here -- at least 4 bedrooms, 3 car garage, hardwood floors, updated kitchen, full finished basement,... Even in our price range, the realtor didn't even flinch - seems like most of those things are fairly standard in Omaha -- it might be kind of fun to house shop on the Nebraska end. Although there seem to be a lot of houses with a second kitchen in the basement, which I think is weird - but who knows - maybe there would be occasions when I needed to make two dinners at once, or maybe I would feel like cooking something, but wouldn't want to walk ALL the way upstairs. :)

On to preschools - Yes, the Imagination Station is still the front runner. Frank went to a couple more "upscale" daycare type settings this week -- Primrose school and Goddard School. He said that the buildings were impressive - brand new, "wow" when you drive up kind of buildings. But, Frank said that the "teachers" looked like they were about 18 (OK, maybe we're just getting old -- they could have been much older than that) and overall, not nearly as "homey." They also didn't have a specific preschool program - and one of them "didn't recommend" 2-3 half days per week for someone Ellie's age, because by the time the kids are 4, they really have a curriculum and it might be confusing for her to be doing the letter "W" on Monday and when she comes back on Wednesday, they would on a different letter... really? Somehow, that doesn't seem like it would be that big of a deal. Frank thought they were pretty full of themselves. He has already filled out the application for the Imagination Station and he's going to drop it off this week!

One of our next missions is to plan a trip for the whole family to head out there, probably over spring break. It might be a good time to buy a house by the first week in April, and it might be kind of fun to get the kids a sneak peek at the new stomping grounds.

Of course, more next week... :)

The Moving Process Begins...

We have officially gotten the ball rolling on the physical move to Omaha (and we thought it was a lot of work to move from the townhouse to this one - HA!) We met with two different realtors this weekend that could potentially help us sell this house. As everyone knows, it is not the greatest market to try to sell a house, but so it goes - we sort of don't have a choice, so we'll make the best of it. The two realtors that we met with were pretty different - we think we know who we are going to go with, but who knows if it's going to be the right decision (any realtor we have ever chosen in the past has proven to be basically worthless, so we don't have a lot of confidence in our choosing abilities).

Another thing that our realtor meetings produced was a lot of "to do"s -- they each had a list of gripes about our house. Frank spent some time and money at Home Depot this weekend. He put a new faucet on the kitchen sink (the old one looked "tired and beat up"), he put some new hardware on the closet doors in the basement, he shoveled the deck (yes, that was a realtor suggestion), and he bleached and scrubbed the grout in the upstairs bathroom (that one actually did need to be done and it looks WAY better.... so the realtor had at least one good idea). The items that we have not done yet is to dust the water heater and the furnace (is she serious? but, I'll probably get to that one... tomorrow...) and to replace the counter top on the island with a "nice piece of granite" becuase our ugly green counter top has a chip in it. As she put it, "how much could that cost... $1000?" Our answer, " yep, probably about $1000... and we're not doing that!" Slowly, but surely, we'll get this place ready to sell - I just hope that someone wants to buy it...

Frank also has an appointment to meet with a realtor on the Omaha end this week. I hope that the market is as grim there as it is here - we might be able to get a deal on the new home purchase, anyways. That could be kind of fun...

In other "moving to omaha" news, I have been scoping out preschools for the kids. I don't plan to work full time, at least not when we first get there, and I know that they both have gotten so much out of the "preschool / daycare" setting here, that I would hate for them not to have that in Omaha. I did a lot of internet research and found that there are a lot of daycare centers similar to where they go here, where we could opt for a reduced schedule -- surprisingly, the rates for daycare there is less than, but not that much less than what it costs here... without a salary from me, it was looking like the three of us would have to play "pretend preschool" at home :) But, as I kept searching, I found a couple of places that offered specific preschool programs - like 2-3 mornings a week for 3 hours a day. My favorite one is called the Imagination Station (and it's not just the name that I love!) Like lots of things in Omaha, the building is new (less than 10 years old) and it's so darn cute! I sent Frank over to check it out and he concurred - it really is pretty cute, he says. And the best part is that the rates are ridiculous - ridiculously low! It is in a good location for where we think we might live, too. So far, it's the definite front runner...
(imaginationstationomaha.com)

That's all for today - but I think the posts will be coming more often now - things are going to start really hopping!