On September 30th, 2014, Mike and I officially became ex-homeowners. We ended up with a relatively decent-sized proceeds check, considering that we were only in the place for a little over five years, but when we did the math it appears that the house cost us about $700 per month, including property taxes. This did not include utilities or repairs or improvements or the gas required to drive to Boulder for work five days a week, to say nothing of the intangible investment of our free time in said repairs and improvements and driving. In conclusion, I don't know that I would do it over again if I had the option. Going forward, I don't want to own another home until we can buy some property and build our own little shack with a great big garage/workshop and pens for the ducks and llamas to whom I will give endearingly nonsensical names, like Senor Cummerbund and Professor Appletini. I suppose my greatest argument against conventional homeownership is neighbors: they have an annoying habit of, well, having annoying habits. Of, for example, letting their dogs bark for hours on end and painting their houses purple.
I probably would have felt better about the whole situation if we could have gotten a little more capital from the house. The market was booming for sellers all summer, since the inventory of available homes in a reasonable price range was especially low in the Denver area, but we didn't get our ducks in a row quickly enough to take full advantage of the legions of people wanting to close and move in before school started. We finished moving almost all of our stuff out of the house by August 8th, and the listing went up that same afternoon. Immediately, requests for showing times started pouring in, which was encouraging, but a week later we had no offers. After another week, we discussed lowering the list price with our realtor, and the same day that we reduced the asking an offer came in. The offer was for the asking price, with no seller concessions: perfect. The inspection took place a few days later, but then the buyers took almost a week to send their inspection objections. They asked for several things, mostly small repairs, but the largest and most cumbersome was a request for us to hire and pay a structural engineer to evaluate the integrity of the house's foundations, and then pay for any modifications recommended by the engineer. This seemed somewhat odd, as the foundation slab of the house had settled in one piece and there was no evidence of any issues, but after some digging our realtor determined that the buyers were concerned about the fact that the driveway was pretty thoroughly cracked and uneven. Well, every house in our neighborhood has a cracked driveway, and it has no effect on the structural integrity of the foundation. So instead of dealing with their list, we just said we would take a couple grand off the asking price and they could deal with the issues on their own time (welcome to homeownership, jerks!). Then their agent came back with their demand that we give them a price reduction of $10,000. Holy crap. What were they going to do, install one of those heated driveways that keeps you from having to shovel? Concrete does not cost that much. Discussions ensued, and after our suggestion that we keep the asking price the same but give them $5000 in seller concessions, which would give them cash to do repairs immediately, was turned down, it became clear that they were unable or unwilling to pay anything more than $7500 under the price for which we had originally gone under contract.
Now, at this point we had had the house under contract and effectively off the market for two weeks, during which time it would not be unreasonable to expect we could have found another interested party. But since we were in a bit of a time crunch, paying as we were both a mortgage in Denver and rent on our tiny house in Pocatello, we felt that we did not have the option of telling the buyers to go away and play their little game with somebody else. This is apparently a new tactic that sellers' agents are seeing in the Denver market: buyers will put in a good offer, then drag out the inspection and ask for a price reduction when the sellers have already lost potential other buyers while under contract. Unfortunately for us but luckily for them, their maneuver would pay off. Frustrating, but oh well. After the inspection resolution was completed with us giving them an absurdly good price in return for not having to deal with their laundry list, things moved smoothly on to closing.
We could have completed all of the paperwork electronically, but I wanted an excuse to come back to CO to visit friends and ride bikes, so I drove the nine hours back with the dogs and stayed with Mike's parents for a few days. Closing was uneventful; the husband in the buyer couple seemed like a decent guy, but the girl gave off a high-maintenance air and I don't think we would get along as friends. Their agent wore a pantsuit that was exactly the wrong shade of pink, right out of 1993. I did a lot of sitting across the table being bored while the buyers signed their lives away, because the previous day my phone had decided to die, utterly and completely, for no apparent reason, taking with it my ability to peruse Facebook or NYT or play Plants vs. Zombies. While the title company employee was out of the room making copies of the huge pile of documents, the buyers asked me some questions about what plants were in the garden, which of the neighbors should be avoided, etc. I will miss some things about the house, like the sunflowers that grow six feet tall with no water or encouragement or work of any kind on my part, and the great big open space across the street, but all in all it was a giant pain in the butt. Good riddance!
Afterward, I took Mike's parents to lunch to celebrate and thank them for all the help they've been through the whole process. In the evening I took the dead iPhone to Verizon for diagnosis (fully and irrevocably dead, decided on a new Droid Mini because it was free), then met friends at a theater in Boulder to see the world premiere of this awesome all-female ski movie called Pretty Faces. Watch the trailer here.
I don't generally get excited about snow sports because snow means little to no biking, but the movie got me super stoked for winter and the ski resort that's 20 minutes down the road from Pokey. Part of the house proceeds will definitely be going toward an AT setup, now I just need someone to teach me how to shred the pow!
Then I stocked up on good Colorado beer (the selection here in Mormon country is a bit lacking) and drove back to Pokey. I had a nasty headwind the whole way, which made everyone grumpy, but it's good to be back in my temporary home, all 570 square feet of it!
