Downsizing- small update

So we are on permanent picnic status here.  With the move coming and downsizing being frantically fixated in the front of my mind always, I went ahead and posted nearly all of our furniture on Craigslist in a "Moving Sale!" post.  I priced it all to sell and sell it did.  We currently are eating on our card table and sitting on fold out chairs.  The good ones though with the cushions.  I call it Industrial Chic.  Progress is slowly being made towards downsizing.  It is overwhelming to say the least but we have (some) time to work through it.  There is absolutely nothing that makes you go through your belongings like moving!

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Home Inspections and Downsizing our Sh*t

Dining Room Set - Buh-Bye!

With the successful sale of our house underway, the next step in the plan is to start the downsizing process.  Our current home is 2230+ square feet (that does not include the full, finished basement).  Less space means we need to bring along less stuff with us when we move.  Our large furniture pieces are useless in the new house which is just under 1500 square feet.  Storage space is limited.  Bedrooms are smaller.  There is only one bathroom.  (Gasp).  This shocks a lot of people.  I cannot tell you how thrilled I am about only cleaning ONE bathroom.  ONE toilet.  ONE tub.  That is a slice of my version of heaven.  Furthermore, there is no dining room in the new house.  No "bonus" living room.  That means my china and dining room set is useless.  The kitchen space is actually larger space-wise.  The pantry has less space, but not by that much.  I am grateful that there is a pantry. Many of the smaller homes that we have seen just don't have one.

C-ya!  Matching Bookcase!

Aside  from the dining/living room furniture we need to downsize on bedroom furniture (our current set is way too bulky and we have way too many pieces to fit into our new, "cozy" master bedroom).  Basement furniture needs to go.  We have a great basement space in the new house but the furniture needs to be more functional than the black leather sectional and large oversized stuffed chair that we currently have.  Our kitchen table and buffet is going.  Our family room couches are going (they should have gone a year ago, they are super worn out from all of our "love" over the years).  Basically, we are starting from scratch.


I listed all of this stuff and more on Craigslist and within 48 hours more than half of it was sold.  After Friday we will have no tables or chairs in our home to eat off of and we will have no master bedroom furniture to put our clothes into (we are keeping our bed), but I will have cash in my pocket to go and buy some new stuff that fits our new home and is functional for the needs of our family.  My biggest struggle is trying to remember the space of the new home.  I have pictures of course, but that differs so much from actually being IN the space.  Not to mention when we were IN the space, the current owners stuff was in there.  It is really hard to picture your family in a home that is currently 100% occupied by someone other than yourself.  This person has a LOT of stuff.  Stuff on the walls.  Furniture stuff.  Clothes stuff.  Knick-Knacky stuff.....  Just a lot of stuff.  It is hard to plan past the stuff.

So basically I Pin things and I obsess over the pictures we took of the new house while we were there last.  Today our current home passed its inspection with flying colors, which we had assumed it would.  Tomorrow our new home gets it's inspection.  I will feel a lot better when that is over.  In the meantime me and Pinterest and Craigslist are becoming quite familiar.

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How we sold our house in 8 days - ourselves!

As you probably know already, selling a home along with finding a new home and actually moving your life from one place to another, is a very stressful time in your life.  There are many decisions that need to be made.  There are a lot of discussions that must be had if you are selling you house as part of a couple.  Those are super fun.  The big questions are:

1. When do we sell?
2. How do we sell?
3. What price do we ask?

I want to focus on the "how" for right now.  The most obvious answer to that and the one that I believe a great majority of people accept as the only real option to them is to use a realty service.  We, however, decided to try to sell our home ourselves.  We did some research and came across the Andrea Dekker's blog, specifically the entry How We Sold Our House!  She made it look so attractive and easy and she had such success that we were inspired to give it a try ourselves.  We followed her lead and created a Wordpress webpage.  On this page we described every detail about our home.  When we moved in.  Updates we did and when they were done.  We also posted a lot of pictures and annotated them.  Check out our webpage HERE.  Many people commented on how well our home looked online and all of the people who contacted us found us on their own, and brought us to the attention of their real estate agents.

The week we decided to move about 8 other homes in our development also decided it was a good time to get out of Dodge.  Everyone including my neighbor two doors down who has the SAME exact home design as we have.  TWO.  DOORS.   DOWN.  And then to add insult to injury, when the listing was officially posted we found out that they underpriced their home for a quick sale.  We went from an immediate high from the original rush of hitting the "publish" button on our listing webpage on minute and then just a sinking feeling in the pit of our stomachs the next.  I would soon learn that this dramatic high and low range of emotions would become a mainstay for us over the next month or so....

We did a lot of things that we heard meant a lot to people who came through our home.  For one thing after viewing our website they felt that they already "knew our home".  Oh!  you are the Wordpress house!  I heard that more than once.  The pictures meant a lot.  I believe the background information that I included on the website made a big difference too.

Second thing we did was network.  I linked our website to a post on Facebook so all my friends and family could see that we were selling our home.  Also, all their friends and family would then see my house....  When we first published that Facebook post on our timelines, within the hour we had over 500 hits on our webpage.  And it was midnight.  That was one of those "high" moments for sure.

We also put an ad out on Craigslist.  Basically I put a brief description of our home with one or two pictures and then a plug "come check out our website for more pictures and information!"  You get the idea.  One note about Craigslist, be sure to "refresh" your listing every 48 hours so you can be bumped back up to the top of the list.

Another big thing, we listed our home on Zillow.   Zillow is a map based search engine for homes that are for sale or rent.  There are homes listed on there that are being sold through a realtor and also for sale by owner homes and foreclosures.  If you are house hunting, you have probably been on Zillow at least once.  We included our link to our website under "House Tours".  5 days after our listing went public we found that our listing was "trending" on Zillow.  I had no idea what this meant until Mike showed me this.....

That was a HUGE high for us!!!!  

I should mention a BIG plus of having the Wordpress website is that you are able to monitor (obsess) over the number of views that you have on your site.  

Put out a sign!  We ran to Lowe's after church on Sunday and grabbed a For Sale By Owner sign with a tube attached for our flyers and we stuck that baby in front of our house.  We also put a smaller sign at the corner.  Our thought there was that if anyone was going to see any of the other of homes for sale in our development, we wanted them to know we were for sale too.  

We first posted our house at midnight on Sunday.  The following Monday (a full week later) we got an offer.  Five days after that we signed a contract.  We were definitely surprised at how fast we sold given the fact that we were up against some beautiful homes in our hood.  So surprised in fact that we were left in a sort of scramble to find a home for ourselves which I will explain further in another blog post.  

I am super happy and super proud of us to have sold our home by ourselves.  Truthfully, a realtor is a marketer, if you are internet savvy and not afraid to talk to people and represent your home yourself, there is nothing a realtor does for you that you cannot do for yourself!  Save yourself the realtor fees and  represent your own home - there is no one who knows your home better than you!

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