Goodbye, house, you served us well!
It's been almost a year since it went on the market, and after three price cuts and some good negotiating with buyer, we were finally able to sell our home. I'm so thankful that we will be all moved out and everything settled before the baby arrives!
We officially close on May 5, and will be moving everything the weekend before in to a storage unit here in GR. We have the truck and movers lined up and the storage unit set, so packing will begin in earnest this weekend.
Jon and I are looking forward to starting the new chapter in our life here in GR officially, without the monkey of a house on our back. We're excited to see what God has in store for us now - and glad that we've been able to get off the roller-coaster of the housing market in Michigan. The plan is to keep living with my parents for a while and recoup some of our losses from the house so that we have a down payment for a new house - hopefully one where we get the awesome deal instead of losing our shirts! :) Here's to new beginnings!
On an interesting note, the buyer asked if he could purchase the art in our kitchen. That art is a series of framed photographs that I took in Thailand and then hung. We turned him down, but it made me feel good to have someone want to buy one of my pictures! Maybe my dream career in photography isn't that far off . . . :)
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Some things I'll miss about the house:
- My nice office with the big window overlooking the backyard
- Being able to have company over
- The beautiful, spacious kitchen with the hardwood floor and the island
- The nice cul-de-sac location with little street traffic
- The spacious master bedroom
- 5 years of wonderful family memories
Some things I *won't* miss (especially over the past 12 months)...
- Fruitlessly losing money every month to interest payments on a house we're not even living in
- Trying to maintain a home from 2.5 hours away: lawn cared for in summer, snow shoveled in winter...
- Wondering whether the sprinkler system, running unattended, has somehow spontaneously self-destructed and flooded the yard and the basement, with me potentially not finding out until a week or two later
- Watching the Metro Detroit housing market fall about 20% over the very same 12-month period we were on the market. (Hooray for competing on price with the slew of homes affected by the 2007-2008 foreclosure crisis!)
- (On Missy's behalf!) The lack of an adult-size bathtub
- Did I mention the payments thing already? :-)
The funny thing is, had I known ahead of time about that whole 2nd set of bullet points (especially the 20% market drop thing), there's no way I would have decided to have us move. But living in Grand Rapids and my new job have really been an amazing blessing, and now, I wouldn't change a thing. I'm grateful to God for carrying us through this, and to Missy's parents for putting up with us! :-)
You should have sold the photos! You can just print new copies for 2 bucks each! What a deal!
Congratulations! Glad it finally sold!
Awww Jon, don't you miss working with us? :)
Congratulations on finally being able to complete the process of moving to the west side (at least from a payments and maintenance point of view!). I'm still a little jealous -- maybe I'll start looking again when that 20% drop recovers a point or two... ;)
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