An incredible amount of work was undertaken by all of us this past summer in clearing out the house and the garage and the storage shed, plus painting and landscaping, to get Mom's house ready to go on the market. By August, we had it ready to go, picked a realtor, and went off on our Alaska cruise. While on the cruise, we heard from the realtor that the feedback he was getting indicated that the selling price was set too high so, over a period of a couple of weeks, we lowered the price down almost to where we had wanted to set it to begin with. He was certain that it would go for more money, but it ended up quite close to our initial estimate.
After sluggish activity in the early Autumn, we decided to just go ahead and get everything ready for the trip to Florida. Mom had already purchased her new home and was going to head down earlier than we had done last year in an effort to avoid having to deal with the snow. We took a quick trip down in September to see the home and spent a whole week cleaning and painting. It looked (and still looks) really pretty and clean and nice. When we came home, we decided that we'd leave November 11 -- my plan being to drive down with Mom and then fly back home.
Then there was an offer on the house. This was a pre-approved buyer so it looked pretty good. Then, she couldn't get financing after all, but was going to continue to try to find another lender. The accepted offer specified a closing date in early December, but it didn't appear that the sale was going to go through so we were still planning to leave November 11.
Then she found another lender and the round of inspections started so we thought it best to postpone the trip. But we heard absolutely nothing further and assumed everything had fallen through so we made new plans to leave the Monday after Thanksgiving. At this point, we had been pretty lucky with the weather -- only one small snowfall -- but we didn't want to wait too long.
Then the phone call came that the loan had been approved subject to yet another inspection. In the midst of all of the waiting, we decided that it would be smart to get the house packed up because that closing date in early December was still valid. So, when the house inspector came, it was to a house that was already being emptied. He ended up taking over 6 hours to inspect every little thing in the house, resulting in a request by the buyer to have an old fuse box removed and the outlets in the kitchen and bathroom replaced. This required an electrician, of course, and this happened during the week of Thanksgiving when everyone was out hunting. There was no chance of an electrician coming in until after Thanksgiving so, once again, our travel plans had to change and I had to cancel another flight.
Finally, though, the electrician showed up and did his job. The closing was set for the 5th of December (instead of the original date of the 4rd) so, on that day, we finished taking everything to the storage unit, returned the cable and TV boxes, signed the papers, picked up the big check and left for Milwaukee where we spent the night before leaving for Florida on Thursday, the 6th. Got all the way to just south of Atlanta on that Thursday night, so we made it to the house on Friday afternoon. Finally!
So, Mom's all moved in and enjoying the nice Florida weather without worrying about the snow and cold that we've been having in Wisconsin since right before Christmas. Pretty soon, the visits will start from all of who are still up here in the cold and looking for a break!
No comments:
Post a Comment