Its off to Buies Creek early tomorrow morning for the start of the Tour De Cure. I’ll be incommunicado for most of this weekend.
Y’all have fun. See you Sunday night.
Its off to Buies Creek early tomorrow morning for the start of the Tour De Cure. I’ll be incommunicado for most of this weekend.
Y’all have fun. See you Sunday night.
Kelly had an agent bring a woman over to see the house yesterday. They spent well over an hour looking the house over! Did the crawlspace, the workshop. The whole bit. The woman asked right off the bat if there had been lots of interest. And when she saw Kelly again, she said she was taking so long because she was figuring out where to put her furniture!
Later, we went to see a house we’ve been interested in. Until today, we didn’t know it was already under contract with another buyer. Still, we spent some good time walking around and checking it out. Hallie seemed to love climbing up and down the stairs. Its a shame that we’ll probably not get a shot at buying it, though.
I’m thinking there will probably be a gap between when we sell our home and when we buy our new one. Kelly and I are kicking around what we might do if this happens. Hopefully, it won’t be an issue, but if it is, I suppose we’ll be living in an apartment for a time.
It’s tough having so many things open-ended, but we’ve got to be flexible in the near future.
Well, I finally got fed up with finding my office birdfeeder in pieces when I come in in the morning. Thus, I led a team of commandos (me, Vann, and Greg) to booby-trap the feeder. Taking a can of shortening with me, I improvised a crude spatula out of a paper plate and lathered the top of the feeder with a thick layer of shortening.
The trap was set. All that was left to do was wait.
First thing this morning, I saw signs of success! The feeder was still intact on the window, but all around the window were splotches of flung shortening! The feeder top has nice squirrelly skid marks down the sides, indicating a squirrel or two went skiing when it decided to attack my feeder.
I’m not close to declaring the war won, but I won a nice battle here. It’ll be interesting to see how the squirrels choose to escalate the conflict now. Stay tuned!
So I was chasing the Kid around the house tonight when I spied two pickup trucks parked outside. Their owners were standing behind one of the trucks, looking across the street at our house.
I thought “hmm, wonder what they’re doing there.” Then I felt pretty thick when I realized that the younger man was the one who brought his family over to see the house last night. He had told us he might bring his father over to look at the house.
Turns out that’s what he did. He and his old man stood and gawked at the house a full ten minutes or more, all from the street. I didn’t stare back, but every time I checked on them I saw big grins on their faces.
This house is soooo sold.
Continue reading
We had two seperate buyers tour the home tonight. The first was a family who currently lives a 1/4 mile away. They were looking for a single-floor house since they were in their 40’s and (gasp!) “getting old.” They brought their two kids with them.
Literally within ten minutes, they were back outside, gushing and smiling. The man asked us about the closing process: surely a good sign! I think it shows that we’ve already sold the home to them on the emotional level, now we’ve got to iron out the details and sell it to them financially. Very encouraging!
The next buyer had quite a different approach. He brought a friend along and both of them spent a good twenty minutes or more going over all of the house. It was obvious he was carefully checking everything out, though he was careful not to let his enthusiasm show. Kelly had learned earlier that he recently had to bow out of a house he was building because the builder’s price had risen steeply. Thus, he had reason to be a bit more cautious.
Afterward, he remarked at how beautiful the back yard is. He’s got a point! It has never looked better, with the azaleas in full bloom and the grass neatly cut. Since he lives in an apartment now, I’m sure he has an even greater appreciation for a nice yard. It’s one feature of our house that has to be seen to appreciate, I think.
He definitely has interest. As he stated, he wouldn’t have spent so much time on it if he didn’t like what he saw. After he had gone outside, we saw him standing in the front yard looking admiringly at the house from the outside. A few minutes later, Kelly saw him drive by the house again, giving it one more look.
Both of these buyers seem quite interested. I’m really not sure which one (if any) might make an offer first. Kelly and I agree that the family seems more likely to jump. But, since they have a home they own already that they’d have to sell, they might not have the money readily available. We’ll see what happens.
Our home showed beautifully both times. It has never looked better. Kelly and I made the home look so welcoming that you would have thought we’d done this hundreds of times before.
Then there’s the fact that the house is just attractive to begin with. It’s got a big-ass helping of curb appeal that makes people want to stop and check it out. When they see the inside, I think that just seals the deal.
We’re certainly having fun with this, and – up to this point at least – things are going extremely well. The tricky part will come during the “closing dance,” where price negotiations and paperwork will play a big role. With that part, we’ll go with professionals, either through a closing lawyer or one of the a-la-carte packages some realtors offer. This will boost the price we’ve paid to sell it, but so far we’re out $20 for signs and fliers. Not too shabby!
Kelly just called and told me that another potential buyer wants to look at the house this evening! That’s two in one evening. Woot!
This process could take months. Or we could be homeless by the end of April. Who knows? The good news is that this process is going much easier than either of us expected.
So why is it that tomato always follows lettuce when you’re ordering a sandwich? When the preparer asks you “lettuce?,” you can bet that next out of her mouth will be “tomato?”
Why is that? Why does the tomato, the most incredible of vegetable-like fruits, that which bursts with Southern summertime savoryness, have to follow the lowly lettuce? I mean, its enough to give tomatoes a serious inferiority complex, one so mightily undeserved.
To help right this wrong, next time try ordering tomato and then lettuce when you buy your next sandwich. You may confuse the lady behind the counter, but you’ll be giving top billing to its rightful owner: the tomato!
My coworker Greg and I were discussing his upcoming “cross country” flight to the Outer Banks. He mentioned flying near a CIA base in the area. It took me a while, but I eventually recalled reading about such a base on Paul Freeman’s Abandonded and Little-Known Airfields page.
Its funny how CIA bases which “don’t officially exist” can have such publicity on the web. For instance, The Independent Weekly did a cover story on Harvey Point two years ago. As did the New York Times in 1998. Freeman has a nice picture of the 4,000 foot airstrip which doesn’t exist, not appearing on any sectional chart or map. That runway is in great shape for not existing, don’t you think?
Apparently, the base is used as “terrorism school” for foreign and domestic intelligence operatives. It chills me to think what might be taught there. As you can see by this recounting by the Independent Weekly, the base isn’t exactly used for Boy Scout summer camp. It isn’t a stretch to imagine Osama Bin Laden being trained there in the early 80’s, back when he was Our Man In Afghanistan.
Well, we’ve had the sign in the front lawn less than 48 hours. In that time, we’ve given away 12 fliers and had two calls from interested parties. The website has proven very popular, too, with an impressive number of visits. To top it all off, we’ve got our very first showing tomorrow evening!
I had to surpress a laugh when the caller asked “have you had any offers yet?” We both expected to generate some interest, but not quite this soon. We spent the evening dashing around the house, cleaning it as best we could for our first guest.
It’s not sold yet, not by a longshot. I mean, we’re not fooling ourselves. Plenty can happen between now and when a buyer signs on the dotted line. But the interest that’s been generated in these two days is more than we expected. I have a very good feeling that we’ll get the offer we want for this house and it will happen soon.
As part of our research, I found a place in town which offers a listing in the Triangle MLS for $500. Should we run out of leads with our sign-in-front-yard approach, we can go with Carolinas Choice Real Estate with minimal risk. If an agent brings us a buyer, we pay the 2.4% commission, but we still make out better than most sellers. If the buyer searches MLS and buys it without an agent, we’re only out the $500 listing fee! Nowadays, anyone can search MLS without going through an agent, so the odds of getting a no-agent deal seem pretty good.
As a side note, we may be willing to pay a tidy finder’s fee if any of the dozen or so MT.Net readers sends us the buyer. Not only that, but you’ll be lavishly lauded here on MT.Net for all the neighborhood to see. You get some cash and the fame that only MT.Net can provide!
Now go get your friends a nice house!
Do you think this guy has a lucky star? A guy was saved by crashing his car Friday. He was driving on I-40 near Hickory when he began to choke on the food he was eating.
Just as he was passing out, his pickup crossed the median and got hit by a truck. The impact dislodged the food in his throat, allowing him to breathe. He crawled out of the wreck with just minor scratches, even though he wasn’t wearing his seatbelt.
I figure he cheated death at least three times during that sequence of events. If I had been the trooper who charged him with reckless driving (he was eating, after all), I’d have been careful not to stand too close to him for fear of a lightning strike or meteor falling out of the sky or something.