Update–12/24/2010

We have finished (I think!) the upgrades to our house.  We did new stainless steel appliances in the kitchen, new granite countertops and the last item was new carpeting throughout the house.  We temporarily took the house off the market for the holidays to complete the upgrades and to avoid any showings while family was visiting.  The house should be back on the market around the 1st of the year.  We will see if the upgrades helped.

I was just reading an article in today’s Chicago Tribune about buying a home and how buyers feel paralyzed because there are so many homes available, many with desperate sellers (foreclosures and short sales).  Because of this buyers just keep looking and looking because they want the “best deal” out there.  They are looking for the McMansion at a starter home price.

Another task completed on our checklist was renting a storage unit and moving some items into it.  A big thumbs down to Public Storage on this issue.  I did my storage unit shopping online to see what the best rates are as there are a few companies out there and many facilities in our area.  On their website Public Storage came out with the best rate for the size I wanted and it was only a few miles from the house.  I was quoted $71 per month for a 10’x10’ unit.  I completed the reservation in November.  When I arrived at the facility with my truck fully loaded the manager advised me the rate would be $88 per month and the online quote was only good for 7 days.  The confirmation did not say anything about this.  The manager stated she had no authority to make a change to the confirmed price.  End result, after many phone calls, was that customer service for Public Storage states I will get the $71 rate but the correction has to be done by the regional manager.  The local manager said this should be done by next week.  Meanwhile I did move our stuff into the unit at $88 rate but may have to do some additional follow up on this.  Public Storage, if you are trolling the web, I am not a satisfied customer!

Christmas eve today and we have a snow storm on the way with one daughter flying in and one driving in.  Hopefully the weather does not delay or cancel their travel plans.

Update 12/13/10

Life on the road is still life in the house.  With the holidays we are getting no activity on showings for the house.  We have taken a more aggressive approach to selling.  We lowered the price another $10,000 and bought all new kitchen appliances, stainless steel.  Here is a picture of the kitchen showing the new range and microwave.

The dishwasher is to the right but would be in another angle.  We already had a stainless refrigerator (fortunately!) so it was not too expensive for these 3 appliances.  Next we will be putting in granite countertops.  We hope to have that done before Christmas.  That will probably be it for the improvements.  I hope it helps!

Our daughter Kim moved into her apartment this past weekend so that cleared out some furniture and other stuff in the house.  We then had to do some creative arranging with our existing furniture so rooms would not be vacant.  I think we did a pretty good job.  It does make the house look bigger!

Next up is to move some of the boxes and other stuff we are keeping into a storage shed we are renting.  That is set for next week and will clear out some stuff presently in our basement.  The last thing to do will be to have a garage sale to get rid of all the remaining furniture and stuff we and our daughters do not want.  That will be done when the house is sold.

Merry Christmas!

Just to keep you interested

It has been a couple of weeks since my last posting, so I thought I would write a little something to make sure my followers stay engaged with this blog.  The entries will be skimpy until we actually get close to going on the road.

The house has not sold but we did get our first offer just after my last posting.  The offer was very low and was not even close to what comparable sales have been in our area this year.  It appears the buyer was limited to a maximum loan amount that put our house out of his reach, but he tried.  From this offer we did learn that there are buyers coming into the area for the new Navistar Corp. facility nearby.  From what I read in the papers there is supposed to about 1500 employees at the facility that is about 10 miles from our house.  This buyer was one and we learned at least one other person who viewed the house was from Navistar.  To stimulate interest we did another price reduction, our biggest yet.  Hopefully someone will want a house for Christmas.

We did start the sorting process for all our “stuff”.  This meant taking everything out of the storage space in the basement and deciding whether to keep it, sell it, put it in the trailer or throw it away.  We needed to do this to get all the Christmas stuff out plus our daughter, currently living with us, is moving into her own apartment, so she will be taking a bunch of “stuff”.  I did rent a storage space to begin later this month so I will begin moving some things there to begin clearing the house out a little in preparation for our move into the trailer.

Meanwhile the weather begins to turn ugly for us.  This should be our last winter and it will be one thing that will not be missed.  It has been very nice living in the Midwest except for the winter.  From mid November until mid March it is like somebody covered the area with a gray sock.  You don’t want to go out because of the cold and snow is only pleasant for an hour or so until it turns mucky, dirty and gets all over the place.  Growing up in California it was always neat to go see the snow and play in it, but once you live with it, FORGET IT!  You have never seen a car get so dirty than after a snowstorm, then you go to a car wash while it is freezing outside, go figure!

OK, I have rambled enough.