We joke with friends who know the details of our home selling and buying process this year. It was insanity. First of all the decision to sell our townhouse and find a single family home was a difficult one. The market wasn't great. We knew that our potential profit was minimal. We loved our house and neighborhood. BUT we needed more room. We found out that we were expecting our 2nd baby just weeks into our search and that not only changed our search criteria, but also put a stricter time frame on the process.
So, our townhouse was for sale. The constant keep it clean and ready for showings was tough, especially while pregnant and taking care of Ethan. We had a few offers, 2 competing offers, 1 seller backed out, and we let another out of her contract because she still had her house to sell when we found another buyer. Our eventual buyer ended up causing delays to our closing date that sent me into a pregnant panic and rage. There were times, even just days before closings were scheduled, that we didn't think it was going to happen. We had settled our hearts to accept that we would wait another year to move if we had to. We didn't know if we would welcome another baby while living in our townhome or shortly after we moved into our new home. Our real estate agent, friends, and family listened to several of my breakdowns along the way. My heartfelt thanks again to those supporters.
It took us 6 months of touring houses to find one that we felt had potential to be our home. We put offers on a couple but walked away when the sellers counter offered because we knew they weren't meant to be ours. We finally found our house and discovered that the sellers were difficult to deal with. There was drama over simple requests, discovery of things that should have been listed in the disclosure, and fear that they would put the house back on the market when we ran into the delays caused by the buyer of our townhouse.
Everything finally fell into place and we moved in October. I was 32 weeks pregnant. Ethan was 20 months old. He amazed us with how well he did with the move. The first thing he did when we walked into our new home was stomp around on the hardwood floors. He loved it! We expected him to ask to go "home" but it seemed like he knew he was already there.
We encountered more stress with utility transfers, specifically Verizon. If we didn't love Fios so much we would have switched to another company. I cannot even begin to explain the issues we ran into because of Verizon. I spent more than 13 hours on the phone with their representatives and managers over the course of 3 weeks trying to fix the mistakes. It was a nightmare. Our appliance deliveries also caused issues and stress. It took more than 5 visits to our house to get everything installed but not without damage to our new refrigerator and newly refinished hardwood floors. I'm certain our floor guy was horrified to learn that the floors were scratched and gouged within a week of his hard work being completed. It seemed like it was always something. The new hot water heater cost how much and was still making that noise? Why wasn't the heat pump working? The plumber rescheduled. The roofer didn't show. We paid a bill but didn't change the payment to the new account number so our bill looks as if it wasn't paid! Ugh!
And then ... I started having preterm contractions and was put on modified bedrest. I'll save that for another post.
This was an incredibly stressful time for us but I'm glad that we can look back on it now with a lighter heart. Although there is much work to be done, we know we made the right decision. There are still boxes and we have barely done any updates, but we've been a little busy with these two beauties, who have much more room to run and play inside and outside of our new home.
