The end of our real estate story...2.5 years later

Reading through some old posts, I realized that I wrote about our horrid real estate ordeal but never updated the blogosphere about it later. And since I know everyone was waiting on pins and needles, wondering, "Did those nice people ever sell their house?", I thought I'd update. Grin.

After almost 2.5 years on the market, we got an offer in October 2010. It wasn't a terrible offer, but it was a contingency, meaning the buyers had to sell their house before they could close on ours. We accepted it with the understanding that we'd take another, non-contingent offer should one come up. (Meaning we continued to have showings and such.) Strangely enough, a couple of weeks later, we got an offer. It wasn't a stellar one, but we had pretty much resigned ourselves to accepting a not-as-great offer for the chance to finally get the heck outta Dodge.

Caroline and I spent several full days house hunting with our realtor. I counted one day and I took her in and out of the car 18 times. (Caroline, not the realtor. That would be weird.) We narrowed the field until we had about 5 houses that were our top choices, then Eric went to see those. There were a couple of decent options, but we both agreed that our favorite was a quaint Cape Cod in a great location. We saw it at least 4 times before making the offer (and I hereby apologize to the sellers for that). The offer was made and settled, but the poor sellers were quite gun shy - they'd almost closed on it shortly before that but the offer fell through at the eleventh hour. Literally, like the day before closing. Which worked out well for us, but I understand how frustrating it was for the sellers and how they didn't really believe we were seriously going to buy the house until we closed.

We were supposed to close on 12/17, but we had numerous delays related to our buyers. They had to redo their loan and all sorts of things that caused delays - they weren't their fault and they were still all in, but it was certainly frustrating. By the time everything was ready to close, it was actually January 7. We closed on our old house that morning in a bit of snowstorm. Luckily, our buyers were willing to let us stay in the house until the next evening, so we had time to move. The only teensy problem was that we weren't sure we could close on our new house yet and the sellers weren't willing to let us move in before closing, even though they were already moved out. (Their realtor advised them to not let us do that...bugger.) We were potentially going to be homeless for the weekend if we couldn't close until Monday. So we had closed on the old house and returned there and finally got a call around 1:00 that we could, in fact, get closed on the new house that afternoon at 3. WHEW! So we closed and spent one last night in the old house and officially moved in Saturday.

Did I mention that about a week before Thanksgiving, we'd found out I was pregnant with Charlotte? While we'd kept the news to ourselves, it certainly added another layer of stress to the whole thing!! It also meant I shouldn't be moving furniture or heavy boxes around. Luckily, we had several guys helping us move, so I was able to sit out the heavy lifting without anyone questioning me!

The next few weeks were crazy - getting unpacked and settled in a new home, Emily starting a new school (she started when they went back after Christmas break, just a few days before closing), and also planning for a baby. About 2 weeks after we moved, we found out she was a she and also shared the news with the world. I felt compelled to get everything possible done around the house before the baby arrived, so I spent the rest of winter and spring organizing, painting, etc. By the time baby arrived in June, it felt like we'd been here forever.

We love our new house and it's in a great location, close to everything and convenient to nearly everywhere we go. It was a terrible ordeal of real estate horrors, but we made it through and we're very happy with the end result. Every day I am thankful that we have a comfortable, cozy home I love in a great neighborhood, we have awesome neighbors, I can get to Target in 3 minutes and I do not have to prepare the house for showings all the time. Hallelujah!!!!