With Bill on his third week of sickness and the kids playing in the RV, I found myself pulling up reserves of energy and motivation. The same week we bought the trailer, we brought a real estate agent over to the house. She is our good neighbor that lives across the street and sold us the house.
Though surprised to hear we were ready to move again, she gave us an honest assessment of the house. Remember that whole spring cleaning? That was to impress her with our beautiful house… In the end, we would have to take our new bookshelves down, move the washer and dryer back to the basement, paint the whole house (except for three bedrooms) and lay in hardwood floors downstairs. Sigh. Really? OK. And then she laid out the paperwork. Selling in this soft market with lots of competition in a small town would be hard.
So what to do? Well, I can’t afford realtors fees and feel pretty good about marketing it myself. So for the time being, we’ve decided to try and sell it ourselves. Bill is excited to take pictures using new lighting techniques he learned at a recent seminar and we can set up a free website.
There are websites that we can use to help sell it on the MLS and supply paperwork for the contract. And since God knows our buyer, we’ll fix the house up for them… My goal is to make them walk through the door and immediately fall in love with it. To think, “That’s exactly the way I would do it or the color I would choose!”
After spending a week cleaning out the garage, I posted tools and such on craigslist. Because we bought the trailer in March, it’s been tight. So we decided that we would raise the money to buy supplies by selling off most of our unnecessary furniture and tools. So far we raised $500. Not bad for three days of work.
I toyed with the idea of having a yard sale, but to be honest… I hate them. I don’t like shopping at yard sales or holding one. I prefer thrift stores (I have my favorites on ½ off days…) and craigslist. Now most of the things I’m selling are for $10 or up. But I do have a few bags and boxes of clothing and odds and ends. Those items I can take in one at a time to an ARC thrift store, where they will give me a receipt for my donation and a coupon for 50% off one regularly priced item. Since I shop there for most of our clothes (the kids and I) and usually go on a weekday, these coupons are worth more to me than a yard sale. I can buy something (like a skirt or pair of jeans) that would cost normally $6 and only pay $3. That bag of clothes not only netted me a tax write off, but was worth $3. And I didn’t have to sell it. And if I buy something more expensive, it’s worth more. Brilliant! Thanks, God. (He gave me the idea).
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