Listing Our House

The trouble with our making so many detailed plans so far in advance is the need to constantly make necessary revisions to all the moving parts as our circumstances dictate.  That has been the case with our original plans for selling our house.

We had originally intended to start marketing our house in mid-May, by which time we thought that our van would already be ready to roll.  We had spread the word amongst our friends and neighbors, and we had a number of people who were potentially interested in buying, so there was the prospect of being able to sell without listing.  Our thought was that we would attempt to sell by owner for a month before turning things over to a realtor.

But the continuing delay in receiving our van has put our house selling efforts more than a month behind schedule.  And our prospective buyers appear to have all dropped by the wayside, the last of whom it seems had hoped for an appraisal much lower than the one that we got.  We've also realized just how much time and effort it will take to deal with potential buyers - time that makes it more difficult to accomplish all the things we want to do during our remaining time here in Boise.

We've also been rethinking whether we have any real desire to come back to Boise in the spring to sell, if the  house doesn't sell before we leave.  We had originally thought there was a reasonable chance that our tenants are likely to be ready to buy their own home at that time, so it would allow us to move in right away and begin establishing permanent residency.  But upon reflection, we are thinking our tenants are likely to continue renting for at least another year or longer, despite their keen desire to own their own home much sooner than that.  That is mainly because the escalating price of housing is likely to keep them from qualifying for the size of house that they desire.  And in our current tight housing market we suspect it may take them a while to accept the reality that few owners are likely to accept less than a full price offer.  If interest rates start rising, especially if the housing market remains tight, that would likely further increase the length of time that they remain our tenants.

We are interviewing two realtors through USAA's Movers Advantage program; we pay the standard 6% commission, but get back $950 of that when the house sells.  We interviewed the first one yesterday and will meet the second this afternoon.  We've been told that we should have a lot of people looking, as in our particular area there is only one comparable house currently on the market.  So we should have the house sold by this weekend, and if we list through the weekend there will likely be multiple offers to consider.

Even buyers seeking VA or FHA loans should be able to close by the date of Alea's retirement (the 24th of July), or by early the following week, meaning we should be able to close before we leave Boise.  This area also has one of the nation's highest rates of cash purchases, in which case a sale could close very quickly.