If you've followed our posts...part one, part two, and part three...you'll know that this particular trip to California's Gold Country is one that we're not returning from. We're making a permanent move here.
Well, we won't be returning for good but we do have to go back, sell our current home, pack up and move.
Sealing the Deal - After the sellers accepted our offer, it was now our responsibility to get a deposit in and open escrow on the house. First, the deposit...it's late Thursday afternoon and we have 72 hours to deliver it. Since the weekend's coming up, that means we'd have to do it in less than 24 since the escrow office is closed over the weekend.
My plan is to do an online transfer from a credit union account to a bank account I have and get a cashier's check but that will take more than 24 hours. Some phoning around and I'm finally able to talk my credit union into wiring the funds straight to the escrow office's bank.
We're now under contract and in escrow to buy this house (we asked for a 60 day escrow and put a contingency on our contract that we had to sell our current house first).
It's time to take a deep breath...now the stress begins. We can't sleep, we're too wound up with our house purchase and the next day, we check out of the Doubletree in Rancho Cordova and head home.
Getting Into Shape - Now the fun begins. It's time to get our current home in shape for showing to prospective buyers. I've been working on getting the junk out of our garage and even started packing a few boxes but it's still not enough and the garage is getting full again.
I go and rent a local storage locker and move all of our extra stuff in the garage over to it.
We have two bedrooms with hardwood floors in need of refinishing. I can't find anyone who can do it within three months. At first, we decide to just sell it as is but our real estate agent isn't having it. She knows someone who can do it now.
We go with her recommendation which means Letty and I have to clear everything out of the bedrooms. The three of us, and our possessions, move into the family room for three days of misery while the crew works on the floors.
The bedrooms could also uses a new coat of paint, so the same crew takes care of that as well as the walls in our living room. Old electrical outlets are upgraded...and one of the crew breaks our breaker box so that the lid will no longer close on it. We remove it for the time being and promptly forget about it (it will come back to bite us later).
Once done, we move everything back...just the two of us. Elizabeth, our realtor (who is excellent, by the way), has a photographer come over to take pictures. There's a bit of shuffling while we move patio furniture and trash cans so that they won't be in the background of his shots. At one point, I even moved our patio set out onto the hiking trail behind our house for a few minutes while he took pictures of our backyard.
In the meantime, Letty is asking me worriedly how low I'm willing to go on our price and still be able to buy our new house. Just take it as it comes, I tell her. No use agonizing over something you have no control over.
Elizabeth texts me and says the open house went well and we need to get out of the house that evening because someone wants to look at it. Later, she tells us it's a couple who put in a bid at several thousand dollars over our price. She shows us that the financing package they have is rock-solid and I'm about ready to say "yes!" but she says "let's just wait a bit until I have the public open house on Sunday."
Again with the nerves...should we really wait or just go in and let this process begin? I have faith in our agent, so we follow along.
The open house...we go out all day, trying to have fun, but worrying more about what's going on back at the house. Finally, it's time to go back.
Elizabeth comes over and says there's another offer and more are on their way. This offer is for even more and now we are in the happy position of having a bidding war.
She says she'll go back to the original bidder's agent. They really want the house, apparently, so she thinks they'll match the offer. They do have better financing so that would be nice.
A couple of days later, she give all interested parties until 10am to get their offers in. After, she comes over and presents them to us...the original bidders have indeed sweetened the offer to even more than the secondary bidders.
That's enough for us...we accept and now they're under contract. A 30 day escrow is opened and a whole 'nuther level of stress opens up.
The Steamroller Arrives - Inspectors must come over and give our house the once over. An appraiser needs to come in and affirm that the house is really worth what our buyers want to pay. Any problems spotted by the inspectors needs to be addressed...remember that breaker box?
First, the termite guy comes in. Since we already had a regular pest control service with Western Exterminator, they waved the fee. Several areas of dry rot needed to be replaced but no termites. They'd take care of it...for a price. We said to go ahead.
As a side note, the inspector used to be a professional baseball player so it was fun for this group of baseball fans to chat with him about his former career.
The house inspector finds a plumbing leak under the master bathroom and says the breaker box needs to be replaced, along with a few other minor items like moving the dryer vent another inch away from the house.
I'm ready to call someone in to fix but our agent says, just wait, the buyers need to tell us what they want done first. We wait...and wait...for a couple of days before we finally get their response. They would wave all the rest of the repairs if we give them $2,000 at the close of escrow.
Fine...it still leaves us with quite a healthy profit when all is said and done and we just want to be through with this process.
The Final Chapter - An article comes out in the newspaper about how the local real estate market is seriously cooling and might even be crashing. It even used one of my friends as a source for the story. Oh no! Don't give our buyers any more reason to try to pull out of this.
"Relax," Elizabeth (and my friend quoted in the story) tells us. "You're too far into the process."
I'm just thinking about Murphy's Law but Elizabeth and my realtor friend were right...the escrow closed right on time. We call up north and they're also impatient to move so the close date on that escrow is moved up and closes the day after ours does back in Southern California. It's time to move.
More is to come but we'll be running the nuts 'n bolts accounts of the transaction stories on our other blog, the Cheapskate Suburban Dweller, while we'll concentrate on the travel aspects on this site.
See you then!
Darryl Musick
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