House for Sale

 

I moved down to this area a little over 30 years ago for a job. It was a good move as it got me to a less crowed area than where I grew up in North Jersey. In 1991 my wife and I bough a house. The real estate market was in a recession when we bought our house so we ended up getting a slightly bigger house than we were looking for. Our house has 5 bedrooms and 3 1/2 baths so there are a few rooms the two of us almost never use. The house has a good layout and is in a good neighborhood so we have really enjoyed living in our house. 

When we bought the house is was in good condition although the people who owned the house before us made some questionable decoration decisions. There was the PINK bathroom, the bright YELLOW kitchen with matching rug and of course the sparkles on the popcorn ceiling. The house sort of had a 60s feel but slowly over the years we made improvements to update the house. This included updating the kitchen to give it a brighter more modern look

 

 Updating the bathrooms to not look like a relic from the 60s

and adding a sun room to let us enjoy the beautiful yard my wife created.

We have really enjoying living in this house and making it our own but it does require a good amount of up keep. With my retirement looming in the next 3 to 5 years we have decided it was time to downsize and start to simplify our life a little. We could of course stayed in our house and paid people to do the all the maintenance. However if we don't move now it will be harder to do in 10 or 15 years so it makes sense to find a smaller place to move to now. 

For the last 3 months we have been preparing our place for sale. Mostly cleaning and getting rid of clutter. And after living in a house for 30 years we had a lot of clutter. We got rid of all the furniture we know we didn't and a lot of stuff we no longer use. It actually felt good to clean house. 

After a little paint and some minor repairs the house was ready for sale by the first week in April. We put the house up for sale on a Thursday and by Friday we already had a full price offer. The current market is starving for homes so any decent house on the market is gone in a few days. We had at least 15 people come through the house between Thursday night and Saturday. We had enough interest and other possible offers that we actually canceled the open house on Sunday. 

 On Monday we accepted the offer and are now in the process finalizing the sale of the house. The people buying the house want to delay the closing until July because of their current lease and that is okay with us because it will give a little more time to enjoy our current house and find our next one. 

I will miss the house when we leave especially the work shop I currently have...

but I'm looking forward living in smaller place with less maintenance so I can dedicate more time to other things like riding my bike.