Flip My House!

We listed our house July 1, 2006...and yep, it's been 7 months. It's in a good, stable, middle class neighborhood. We have a new roof w/a 40 year guarantee; we painted completely inside and out just last May; we completely remodeled the kitchen - gutted the old double ovens (couldn't find a replacement part!); the drawers have the nifty pull-out shelves that are s-o-o-o handy; until the hard frost my yard was beautiful. Oh yeah, we replaced the plumbing last year and had a new A/C installed back in 2000. We have replaced all of the fencing, some of which is a decorative stone/brick.

The hitch? Are we asking too much? Nope. We've even come down twice. No, sad truth is, even though we're on a corner lot with a N/S exposure, we live across from an elementary school and most people don't like the high school district because they all want their kids going to one of the new ones. Okay. I had very mixed emotions about living across from a school. I had visions of them cutting across the yard and trash, etc. Least of all was concern about noise because at the time we purchased the house, I was employed full time. Since I've been here all day, it still isn't a problem. The playgrounds are all on the other side of the school and you really don't hear the kids much at all. The den/great room is in the back of the house with the kitchen, which is where the majority of people spend their time, and the bedroom isn't an issue either.

Another major issue is this: Do not do business with friends. I repeat: Do not do business with friends! My husband is good buddies with this guy whose wife is a realtor. Guess who we listed with. Yep. We've had about 5 "Open Houses," and maybe 4-5 other realtors have brought clients to view. My husband asked her why she didn't bring any of her clients in to see it and her response was, "None of my clients are in your price range." Duh... Don't teams in a major real estate office beat the bushes a little better than that? She only has 5 listings and they're all below our price.

Our listing is up the first of March and this time we're going with a different realtor. Hopefully, that will jump start things for us. Not knowing where we'll be living is frustrating the daylights out of me. We're giving up our home because we can no longer afford the payments, so we plan on moving to a mobile/manufactured home and in the meantime, buy property in the mountains. When hubman retires in 2-3 years, we'll be set to place a manufactured home on said prop.

It's just difficult to be in limbo-land. But I've thought long and hard about how very blessed we are to have a house to sell. My daughter has helped us tremendously with payments (God bless her!) which we'll pay back when we sell. If we'd been in the path of the recent tornadoes or in Katrina's path we wouldn't have been this "lucky." (I'm not a believer in luck.) And the other plus is that we're not facing bankruptcy at this point. So while I throw a pity party now and again it's mainly due to the "not-knowing" situation we find ourselves in. We could be walking in someone elses' shoes right now and they be a real tight fit. Blessings and grace all rolled into one magnificent package.