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Lisbet
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| Posted: Aug 07 2006 at 5:21pm | IP Logged
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Oh Sara, I'm so sorry to hear that you were in that situation. I am all to familiar with it. We are smack in the middle of the very same thing, we actually did have the social worker at our door. We don't feel 'safe' for our family, or neighborhood has become hostile to our family.
SO, all that said, our house will be on the market by the end of the week. We are selling it $10,000 lower than the average price for our neighborhood. Our neighborhood is simply saturated with homes for sale, and we feel this is the best way for us to sell quickly. Most houses in this neighborhood are in pristine condition, there are 2-4 people living in them, and they are gone most of the day anyway. We can't compete with that, there are 10 of us in this house, nearly 24/7. Our house will never be pristine. We figure an investor will end up buying our house. The kitchen needs redone (walls, flooring, and ceiling) and the first floor needs a coat of paint. The upstairs bath needs a bit of work too. We are begining a novena tonight ~ I will add all of you in!
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Lisa, wife to Tony,
Mama to:
Nick, 17
Abby, 15
Gabe, 13
Isaac, 11
Mary, 10
Sam, 9
Henry, 7
Molly, 6
Mark, 5
Greta, 3
Cecilia born 10.29.10
Josephine born 6.11.12
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JennGM
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| Posted: Aug 07 2006 at 6:21pm | IP Logged
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What terrible situations for your families! Praying to St. Joseph for all of your intentions!
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Jennifer G. Miller
Wife to  & ds1  '03 & ds2  '07
Family in Feast and Feria
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Sarah
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| Posted: Sept 26 2006 at 10:49pm | IP Logged
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I have discussed this in the prayer forum, but I'll say quickly here that we might get an offer on Friday from a couple that has already taken a contractor through to rennovate the whole place.
We are preparing ourselves for a "Low Ball" offer.
The house is listed with a flat fee realtor (all we could afford) and is listed now 6K less than we paid for it.
Any news on all you ladies and your homes? Or would you rather not think about it?? (I know that feeling  . . .)
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Six boys ages 16, 14, 11, 7, 5, 2 and one girl age 9
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Lisbet
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| Posted: Sept 27 2006 at 9:29am | IP Logged
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Sarah,
I hope it all works out for you. I would be so excited!! We found a house we just love, but no takers on our house yet. We've been up for 6 weeks and haven't had a viewing in 4. We simply can't afford to buy a new one while still own this one.
Will add you to our ongoing St. Joseph novena!
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Lisa, wife to Tony,
Mama to:
Nick, 17
Abby, 15
Gabe, 13
Isaac, 11
Mary, 10
Sam, 9
Henry, 7
Molly, 6
Mark, 5
Greta, 3
Cecilia born 10.29.10
Josephine born 6.11.12
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Dawnie
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Sarah,
If all continues to go well, we will close on our house on Friday.
The first offer we received on our house was last month, 11 months after we put it on the market. It was a ridiculous low ball offer, AND the buyer wanted us to buy a home warranty and give them $3000 cash back. I know this is just business, but it really made me mad that they would offer so much below the asking price AND ask for all that "extra" stuff!  We counter-offered, saying that we would give them the "extras" they wanted if they would pay the asking price (which $7000 more than they offered). They said no, that what they offered was the maximum they could afford...why was their realtor even showing them our house, knowing that it was out of their price range?
We received a second offer only about 2 weeks later, which was much more reasonable, although still not what we needed. We talked it over w/ my in-laws, who have been helping us out, and they told us just to take the offer and they would cover the difference. We did go ahead and counter-offer, asking the buyers to pay about $2000 more than they offered originally. They accepted our counter-offer, and we will still be short about $1500, but I'm glad that my in-laws won't be having to kick in quite as much.
Sarah, we had a lot more activity on our house once we updated our kitchen and dropped the price so that we were just a little lower than every comparable house on the market in our area. I think it's all about setting the price right. You have to be competitive w/ all the other houses in your area...no one is going to pay the same or more for a house that needs some work or isn't quite as updated as a house down the street that needs no work at all. And there are so many houses on the market right now that buyers know they can just keep looking and find what they want for the same price, or even less. 
Assuming that the closing goes through on Friday, it took exactly one year to sell our house. I really can't complain too much b/c we've had so much help from my in-laws. Things are tight financially right now, b/c we were counting on making enough money on our old house to pay off our van, eliminating our car payment. We can make the payments, there is just no room for discretionary spending. We only have the car payment for another 18 months, though, and dh is up for a raise and a promotion next year.
If I had to do this all over again, I would wait until we had sold our old house to buy a new one. That is what we would have done, but my in-laws thought this house was too good of a deal to pass up and offered to help us get into it. I would also not make any financial decisions counting on selling my house at a certain price. Another thing I have learned is to make home improvements a bigger priority. Our home is the biggest investment we have, and if we don't do improvements and updating, we won't be able to "cash in" on our investment.
I'd be interested to hear what lessons others have learned during their home-selling process. Maybe we could save others some grief by sharing our lessons learned the hard way?
Dawn
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Visit my blog!Water Into Wine:Vino Per Tutto!
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rm4mrfrus
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| Posted: Oct 13 2006 at 10:25pm | IP Logged
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Pulling up this thread again to ask for prayers that the people who looked at our home today puts in an offer. We have had our home on the market since March and dropped the price a whopping 70k!!! (and it was not really a high dollar house to begin with! Not a fancy new one or anything!) But we dropped the price another 10k yesterday and got someone looking at it today! The lady took videos of it and told the realtor that she loved it and is bringing her husband by on Sunday to look too but that she thinks he will love it also! We decided at the beginning of the month to also put it in the paper to rent so our realtor called tonight and said, don't rent it out just yet! We have not had any calls really on renting it either so that is not a problem!
One of our prayers this entire time has been that a family buy the house. We have done so much "family" type stuff to the house that we hated to see an investor buy it and not care about it. We were praying that a family would see it and picture their own kids in the rooms and backyard. So this family could be part of an answered prayer.
Dawn, I don't know if we have learned any lessons from this to share....I do agree though on making improvements as you go so it is not a huge issue when you need to make the house nice to sell. We invested a lot into it to sell it and it would have been better if we had been able to do it all along. We are trying to keep that in mind with our new house.
I think there ARE lessons God wants dh and I to learn from this whole experience....I just have not yet figured it out. His timing was not ours and it will take some big events to pull us out of the financial hole we are in now, but it could have been a lot worse! I am continuing to pray for all of us trying to sell our houses!
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Hollee married to dh in 94,
ds(96), dd(97), ds(00), ds(02), ds(03) and dd(05)
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MarilynW
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Dear everyone
I will be praying a lot for you and for your houses to sell.
I have been wanting to move for a couple of years. I have my dream home all mapped out in my head and on paper (had to do something during the sleepless hours of my last pregnancy!!) - but we have never even got as far as listing our house. We live in NoVA which is so expensive - and now there are a lot of houses on the market. Last year when we would have made a great profit on ours - we would have had to move across a few states to be able to afford something better!
It is funny - I had this view that I wanted the perfect house to homeschool and to have more kids - well we are doing both without moving! We have one absolutely awful neighbor (another thread altogether) - but generally our neighbors are ok.
I am in two minds about how much home improvement to do before selling - a couple of years ago I figured that I wanted to enjoy some of the improvements before selling. We try and do one major project every year - but our aim is more for the smooth running and easy cleaning of our house than Better Homes and Gardens. eg pergo flooring on main level, ceramic tile floors in kitchen. I always try to have the house clutter free and have scheduled organization days - in the eternal hope that we would be able to list and sell quickly should the opportunity arise!!I have to say though - I do not know how to give a house that "empty" "staged" look recommended by realtors when one has several children and homeschooling?
Blessings to all of you - bake bread and brew coffee is what I have heard. And pray for the people who will buy your home - that it may be the perfect place for them.
Marilyn
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LLMom
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We are putting our house on the market the first of the year. You ladies have me scared! I like my security. Hopefully, we will be moving in the summer. I can't imagine separating our family but it may come to that. Those paying 2 mortgages, do you rent out the one you are trying to sell or just keep it vacant? I don't think we could afford 2 mortgages. But renting scares me too. Anyone here rent a house before?
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rm4mrfrus
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Thank you, Marilyn for your prayers, they are very appreciated!
Janet,
We have been in our new house 2 yrs this coming Feb. We rented out our old house for the first year and it was a good and bad experience. We did not renew the lease last Feb because we put the house on the sale market. We incorrectly figured that it would sell before summer. It has sat empty since Feb. We had the reserves to carry the 2 mortgages for a while but the house has been on the market longer than we had reserves for. So we are in a tight financial spot right now. We had decided that if we did not have a contract this month that we would put it back up for rent and keep it for sale also. Figuring that an investor would purchase it and be happy to already have renters in it. We have not even had many calls to rent it. We thought that at least having it rented would make the monthly mortgage and we would not keep having to pay 2.
We did not do tons of research before renting out the house. We left a lot out of the lease that I would now include in any lease. We were not as diligent as I would be now in finding good tenants. We pretty much took them at their word and let a lot of things slide. We ended up with tenants who made the rent payment only after much work on our part every month to get it. I would recommend doing a good bit of research and such before jumping in. But I would do it again, if that says anything.
Well we are hoping and praying to get word tomorrow or Monday that we have some buyers! I'll let you know! Thanks for the prayers!
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Hollee married to dh in 94,
ds(96), dd(97), ds(00), ds(02), ds(03) and dd(05)
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Sarah
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Praying for all of you. The couple that was interested in our house wanted to low-ball us 40K lower than we are asking and fix it up, and resell it. They were just looking to turn a fast dollar . they never did make an offer. . .
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Six boys ages 16, 14, 11, 7, 5, 2 and one girl age 9
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Lisbet
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| Posted: Oct 15 2006 at 4:45pm | IP Logged
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Sarah, I'm sorry to hear that. Ours has been up for 8 weeks, we had 3 viewings the first week, nothing unti now, we have the first viewing in 7 weeks tomorrow. I pray the right people come along - SOON! :)
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Lisa, wife to Tony,
Mama to:
Nick, 17
Abby, 15
Gabe, 13
Isaac, 11
Mary, 10
Sam, 9
Henry, 7
Molly, 6
Mark, 5
Greta, 3
Cecilia born 10.29.10
Josephine born 6.11.12
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Erin
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Lisbet
did you end up offering for the house that you liked?
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Erin
Faith Filled Days
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Lisbet
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I wish we could Erin, but we simply can't do anything until we sell this one. It would be more of a financial strain than we can hanlde. It's still available though, I hope this viewing goes well today. I haven't the energy to clean the way I would like...
How about you, did you buy that beautiful property you were looking at?
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Lisa, wife to Tony,
Mama to:
Nick, 17
Abby, 15
Gabe, 13
Isaac, 11
Mary, 10
Sam, 9
Henry, 7
Molly, 6
Mark, 5
Greta, 3
Cecilia born 10.29.10
Josephine born 6.11.12
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Dawnie
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Sarah,
Any bites on your house yet?
Dawn
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Mom to Mary Beth (99), Anna (02), Lucia (04), Clara (06), and Adelaide Victoria (2/28/09)
Visit my blog!Water Into Wine:Vino Per Tutto!
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Sarah
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Dawn, thanks for caring.
We closed on our house on Nov.30th and had to pay a huge chunk at closing, but we're glad to move on now.
God bless
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Essy
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Just came across this thread and it is so timely for me...we just put our house on the market officially on the second of January and had our open house on the Sixth. Actually I'm preparing right now for a showing this afternoon...so if you could all say a prayer for us. One good thing that has come out of it so far, is having to keep the house nice and clean...lol.
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Mom to Sarah(May 2002)and Christian (August 2003)
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Sarah
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praying. . .
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Martha
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Oh I'm so nervous waiting to hear if the offer we put in on that house will be accepted or not and then I see this thread! 
If they accept our offer, our current home will go on the market tomorrow morning. If we have to, we'll sell it for breakeven to get out of here and into the new(er) one asap.
Even if this house sells for asking price, we won't make a dime. It'll be have to be turned around and used as down for the new house.
We have to buy on contingency. Houses in our price range that would suit our large family needs just don't come up very often and are usually snapped up by an invester before they even hit the ads. If our house sold and we didn't have a house ready to close on - we could literally end up homeless. People just will not rent to such a large family and most other people cannot accomodate us indiffenitely until we would find a home. Many people won't accept a contingency clause at all.
In the last 2 years, we have seen 3 homes other than this one and ALL were snapped up by an investor the same day they went on the market. Once we literally walked in right behind the guy to see him pay cash. 
I'm praying so very hard that God was saving the best for last and this house we've offerred on is "the one" He has chosen for us finally! (I need a praying smiley here.)
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Martha
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Dawnie
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Sarah,
I'm so glad to hear that your house finally sold. It's nice to just be done with it, isn't it?
Martha, I hope this time everything works out for you! I will keep you in my prayers.
Dawn
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Mom to Mary Beth (99), Anna (02), Lucia (04), Clara (06), and Adelaide Victoria (2/28/09)
Visit my blog!Water Into Wine:Vino Per Tutto!
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4Real Forums : Tea and Conversation
Topic: Is your house "For Sale"?
