Judgement Day

As Brenda and I sit in a Barnes and Nobles (killing time while the house inspector does his job) we dream of water and easy sailing. Selling our home has taken so much longer than we ever dreamed and it has taken a toll on our optimism. This past week we have finished a few minor items on the house and began the final purging of personal items. Brenda comes from a long line of "we have to keep that" people in her family and she is finding the process a little tough. I love clearing stuff out, but I'm ready to be done with it.

People are buying furniture and other large items every day now which will make it easier for the next move to a small storage unit. We will stack up a bunch of family momentos and pictures in plastic tubs that eventually make their way to Mike's sister's buildings in Arkansas. The rest is going to the boat or going away. We should know today or by Monday's deadline whether the closing will happen on March 12th. 10 days to empty and clean everything. I hope we are really busy next week.

Please Mr. house Inspector, be nice!

 

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What's Next?

Let's assume the house closing goes as planned and we become homeless on March 12th. What is the plan from that point forward? Well, first off we would stay with Mike's Mom for a couple of weeks as we look for a month to month rental in the Madison area. We plan on working until August and possibly as late as October (Mike only). Brenda would finish the school year and maybe teach one session of summer school.

We have our much anticipated 20 day bareboat charter in the BVI's in mid-June, boat shopping and enjoying the awesome Wisconsin summer season with our friends. We haven't decided if our O'Day 25 will go up for sale in the spring or not. It really depends upon how our boat search progresses.

Once summer is done we would make our way down to Orange Beach to continue our boat search. If we find the right boat before that time we would head to wherever the boat is stored and begin our refit and cruise right there. Either way, we are really looking forward to starting our adventure.

The house looks great and is in really good condition. The new owners will truly love living there. All we need to do now is continue moving our stuff out and hope the closing goes smoothly.

 

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Maybe?

We have an accepted offer on our house! We still need to get through the appraisal (tomorrow), buyer financing and of course the dreaded home inspection. We know the house will appraise higher than needed and the buyer's financing looks to be going well, so all we really need to worry about is the house inspection. You just never know what kind of inspector you are going to get.

A bad example occurred when we sold Mom's home a while back. Roy, Mike and a few others built the house from the ground up. When the inspector showed up without a ladder and immediately said we need a new roof we knew this wasn't going to go very well. Roy asked him how he could possibly tell from the ground that the roof was bad. The inspector actually claimed that he built the house himself and could tell it was degraded. Roy questioned the inspector about his certainty that he had built the house. The inspector stuck to the story about building this house. Even after Roy and my Mom explained that we had built the house the inspector wouldn't relent. Unbelievable.

Cross your fingers for us. The buyers want to close March 12th, so we have a lot of work to do really quickly.

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Lowering Our Standards

Just needs a little work.

 

Well our house has now been up for sale for one full year. We certainly didn't envision that happening when we listed it with high expectations last winter. We've made our final price reduction (ok, this is our final, final price reduction) and give the current realty company 60 days to get it sold. If that doesn't work we will have to try a new realty outfit just to get a fresh start, new marketing ideas and some new hope.

As the price has fallen on our house we keep adjusting our cruising budget and boat fund downward. We still feel we can achieve our 2 year cruise dream, but it will be scaled back in how far we can roam due to the age and condition of the boat we could still afford. It is a good thing we enjoy repairing and updating old boats. Between the two of us we can take an old classic boat with good bones and make it a safe and comfortable home without much assistance. Mike actually looks forward to this process.

Let's hope this "final price reduction" is the ticket. Otherwise we may be looking at something like this for our cruise. Actually Mike's sister Lisa would probably love this little gem. We do like the hot tub and the comfy helmsman's seat.

 

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