We are lucky. The kids and I arrived here on a Saturday. Justin came up the next
day, Sunday. We gave the realtor the go ahead to have the pictures taken
of the house and it was listed that Thursday. That very first day, we
had a viewing and that couple placed a bid that Friday! It took a couple
of back and forths, but we ended up with a ratified contract. The very
first couple to look at our house, on the very first day it was on the
market, bought it. So yeah, we are lucky. Well, let's not give luck all
the credit, either. We did our research and priced the house perfectly.
We (mostly Justin) worked our butts off to get it staged nicely. And
Justin might disagree, but it is my honest opinion, after looking at a
dozen or fifteen houses up here in PA, that I don't think there was even
one of them that was staged as nicely as our house in Frederick was.
In
fact, I was getting pretty discouraged looking at houses here. We looked at
soooo many online in the weeks leading up to our move and in the time
before we were first able to go look at houses. I should say, too, that
we moved into our hotel having only the vaguest idea what area we might
actually settle in. Justin had heard that one area was nice, but it was
out of our price range. We initially considered New Jersey, but decided
we really wanted to be somewhere between Philly and my dad near
Allentown. We slowly, slowly started narrowing down the areas based on
price, commute, and other factors. We did some driving around, but even that is tough with the kids. It is hard to pick a place to live
when you know nothing of the area. Then, when we finally seemed to
settle on an area, we were disappointed in the houses we were seeing. We
just weren't seeing the perfect house. Some were out of our price range
and STILL not something I'd buy, or they were in our price range but
dumps, or they were beautiful and priced right but in a really weird
location. Some of them looked great in pictures but turned out to be
awfully strange in person. I am pretty sure we almost burst into flames
in one house...
I was starting to think that we might
really end up having to rent for a while, only because we couldn't find a
house we liked! It seemed a shame to rent for that reason alone.
Finally we saw this house, I'll call it "Irish." I had seen it online
and requested to see it in our first batch with the realtor, but it
wasn't available for viewing and we sort of forgot to circle back around
to it until much later. I kept looking at it online. The kitchen was pretty darn ugly. It had the same cabinets as our ugly hotel! And that orange paint on the wall... yikes! But it was priced low enough that we could hope to save up to finish the basement. The neighborhood was great. The commute seemed reasonable. The layout of the house was just about perfect. It had a great yard. So we finally got an appointment to see it. I had put a lot of hope into "Irish," looking at the listing over and over again on my phone. And when we walked in, we were relieved to see that it looked the same in person as it did online. The kitchen was still ugly, but we can deal with some aesthetic issues. So, we put in our bid. Again, a couple of back and forths (and at least one frustrating misunderstanding) and again we had a ratified contract.
The house is not perfect, but no house is perfect. We can make this house our own over time. We can take care of it and improve it and become comfortable in it. We better, because they can pull my lifeless body out of this house in a hundred or so years. I am not ("do you hear me, I mean it") going to move next time.
So here we are in our new house in Pennsylvania, truly starting our new lives. We really like our new neighborhood. The kids are having fun in the new yard and love scootering around the cul-de-sac. We've been given gifts and warm welcomes by the neighbors. We still have a long way to go in terms of making meaningful connections, but that is the kind of thing that can only come in time. At least we're home.
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