Sunday, June 21, 2009

Let the staging begin...

This? Is so not my house

To briefly recap where we are in the house-hunting/downsizing/project declutter fiasco that is my life... we've decided on a townhouse in a particular area. Found a short sale that was going to foreclose on July 26. Decided to put in an offer, even though we have not listed our house for sale yet, because short sales take several months to close and we had nothing to lose by getting it started now.

Friday, on the way to the realtor's office to submit the offer, she called to say the townhome was no longer on the market. The owner had been approved for President Obama's refi program for upside down mortgages. I mustered all of my goodwill to not pout and feel sorry for missing out on a steal of a deal and to be happy that a nice person was able to keep his home thanks for our super hot president. God bless America. Amen.

There are other townhomes for sale in the complex that we've chosen that are in our price range, but they're not short sales. They're just regular old sales. Which means when you put an offer in, you need to be ready to move. And we? Are not ready to move. And our house? Is not ready to show. Because we? Are hoarders and slobs and collectors and pack rats and very poor housekeepers. And by "we," I mean "I," except for the slob part. That's the whole family. And except for the collector part. That would be Carlie, wherein collector means junior hoarder in training.

After having two realtors give estimates of what they think they could sell our house for, we are going to give it the old FSBO try. For a month. After which, we'll list with a realtor if it's not sold. I've done the FSBO thing before, with my ex-husband, and was very successful. But that was a long time ago and in a land far far away, and the housing market was not sucking the way it is now. So this will be an interesting little experiment.

Before I can say our house is officially "for sale," I need to be prepared to have people come in and look at it. I am the MASTER of SPEED CLEANING when people are coming over, wherein speed cleaning means hiding shit. Because when people come over? They don't look in the cabinets and drawers and closets. But when people come over to look at your house because they think they might like to buy it, you've got to be ready to have them look in closets and such. 

So now we are back on the downsizing bandwagon. Since the start of project declutter, I have rid this house of two full-size pickup loads of crap, as well as many garbage bags here and there to Goodwill. But now we're getting serious. Because? Staging.

I know Mama Milton will be able to give me valuable staging advice, and if anyone else has words of wisdom, please, don't be shy. Because our current style is more Fred Sandford meets the Adams Family than Minimalist. And I? Am ready to move on.

6 comments:

Maggie May said...

Oh my God I feel stressed reading this! Moving/buying/seeking argh. I wish you all the home luck in the world.

stephanie said...

Man, you are super brave. I'm having a hard enough time trying to clean via the stash shit in various places method. If I had to "stage," I'd be losing [what's left of] my mind.

Happy hour soon, methinks.

katydidnot said...

yeah, i can't help. i just throw everything away and then regret it.

Margy said...

I hide shit in the closet - we have a 4 car garage filled with boxes of crap that moved with us form Florida....9 years ago...boxes haven't even been opened....no room for cars. You don't want my advice! Except when you show the house - have lavendar around - it smells nice.

Keetha said...

If anyone can pull this off, I'm thinking you can. Can you rent a small storage building and haul stuff there during the staging?

Cat said...

We are seriously considering a move, but all of the stuff you talked about scares me. We've lived here 10 years, and although I'm in the "throw everything away and regret it later camp," I've still accumulated a lot of junk.

I'm just going to follow you and see how it goes.