Selling The Duff House

 

It's funny how quickly life can change. Right now, we are in a very transitional stage of life. With three of our four kids in college, and one left to graduate high school in another year and a half, we are slowly staring to think about a diminished household.

For the past few years (who am I kidding-I've been doing this for decades) I've been keeping a sharp eye on the local real estate market to see what's available in our price range. We talked about building a house on some acreage, buying a fixer upper, and finding that most rare of unicorns-the ready-to-move-checks-all-our-wish-list-boxes- house. Impossible,right?

Maybe not. A few months ago, I found a house online that I kept going back to. It wasn't perfect, but it did manage to check off every single thing we both wanted. Sadly, the house was contingent, so I moved on. As we started to get more serious about making a move, we let our realtor know our plans and she started looking too. Imagine my surprise when the house I'd seen came through as available.

We went to see it immediately and made an offer. Quick sharp.

Turns out, two previous offers had fallen through (no fault of the house) and we were able to make a lower offer, which was accepted. It really was a whirlwind. And it became clear that we needed to polish off a few chores at the Duff House to ready it for listing.

Here are the listing photos:

To ready the house, we mostly did major cleaning and decluttering; packed up as much stuff as we could to box in the garage, and set the stage for showings. We painted the kitchen, replaced the sink and faucet, and retiled the backsplash. We carpeted the den and had the living room carpet stretched, which made a huge difference. Did some minor cleanup to our exterior landscaping and paint, and we called it done. Our realtor was very helpful with what projects would bring us the most return on our investment of time and money.

Because it was easiest, I staged and photographed the house for the listing, letting our realtor give me suggestions as to how the rooms should be set up.

We are thrilled that we were able to sell in just a couple weeks. And now, we have packed up most of our things and look forward to closing and moving in a couple weeks. In my next post, I'll share photos of the new place, as well as some decorating plans I have in mind.

Whilst it is bittersweet to move out of a home that has held so many memories, I am thankful that we can take pack up our memories to take with us.

Here's to the next thing.