catching up - a year in review, June 2012

It has been just a little over a year since I posted anything of substance, as outlined in my post earlier.  I figured I'd start off small with that recap of resolutions from years past just to get the rusty fingers used to the keyboard again.  Now it is time to get down to the actual goods.  The details, or deets as the kids call it these days.  Ok maybe they really don't call it that, but whateves.  YOLO.  LOL.

Anyway, back to the topic at hand.  The last 12 months have been an absolute blur. So much has truly happened since May of 2012 that I think the best way to break this down is to give you a little blurb about each month.  If you don't like my style stop reading.  No one invited you anyway.  

June 2012

House
In the end of May 2012, a lovely couple made an offer on our house that we promptly accepted.  Once this happened, we kicked our house hunting into overdrive.  We knew from the start that wherever we moved to, it was going to be our"forever home" (yes, we know it is a cheesey term, we're cheesey kind of people).  Our search area was in South Jersey, as close as possible to my parents, still a reasonable distance from my office in the city and the house was to be everything we wanted it be to and more.  We never ever ever expected to want to move into an old house.  In fact both Pope and I agreed that we didn't even want to look at houses that were more than 40 years old.  After looking at a number of different neighborhoods we decided that we loved the character of an old house.  A new Toll Brother's community could offer us all the amenities in the universe, but it could not offer us character.  

Character is what lead to our two final choices, both of which were built in the 1800's (a little past that 40 year cut off) in Woodstown Borough.  While both houses were fantastic, the one we decided on was just perfect.  You could tell the previous owners loved the house and took pride in their home (bonus, it was the house a fellow WHS class of 2000 graduate grew up in).  The decision was a no brain-er.   Anyway, we made an offer, they accepted and we set a date for settlement on both homes (7/30 and 8/1 respectively) which started a mad dash to get everything done and packed up before settlement.  I would post pictures, but I just realized that I actually don't have any, which I'll promptly correct tomorrow (yay vacation day) and add them to a later post.  

Obligatory Mommy & Me Selfie
June 2012

A3

We started calling Ari "Bly" or "The Bly Bot" around this time last year.  One of us texted the other about A3 and our iPhone auto corrected whatever the term was to "Bly Bot" which found to be incredibly hilarious for no real reason. This is actually completely irrelevant, I just wanted to fill up some text so I'm not just randomly posting pictures of the kid.  But seriously, he's really f-ing cute and the center of my universe, so why wouldn't I be posting pictures of him?  Besides, I'm sure you'll all want to see him grow over the months.

Me

Normally I wouldn't have a little section all dedicated to me.  I mean really, this is MY blog, so by default it's already kinda already about me or my life anyway, so having a little section dedicated to me is slightly obnoxious.  But June 2012 was a big deal for me as on June 7, 2012, I turned 30 years old.  The big 3-0.  Halfway to 60.  Using my youngest sister's logic, being 10 years away from 40 makes me almost 40.  Being that it is my 31st birthday tomorrow (by the time I post this it might already be midnight), I'm sure I'm now officially a senior citizen to my sister.

On that note, this old lady has to hit the hay!

still selling the house - a lovely Cape Cod

So as I previously mentioned, I'm a little behind on the posting so just hang tight, I'm slowly updating you on everything that's been going on.  I've had a few people reach out about the progress on selling the house, so I figured it should have its own little post...

Our house has been for sale now for a little under four months.  In that amount of time we've had over 30 appointments plus our open house, so we're definitely getting a lot of foot traffic through. On two separate occasions we had people that were pretty close to making an offer - two different buyers asked to come back a second time to see the house with their parents.  The first couple came back a second time with their parents, after the apointment their realtor noted "they really love the house but have decided it's just not quite big enough for them. Lovely home", which means their parents talked them out of it (you don't come back to see a house for a second time with your parents and then realize it's too small; mom and dad pointed out it was too small).  Another couple came back, again with their parents, and the feedback from that second appointment was "She loves the house, but he really wants a basement OR a garage. They are still thinking about it and I will keep you posted".  I can't blame this one on the parents; I guess magically between the first appointment and the second appointment our house was going to grow a basement or a garage.  Hmm.  Anyway, the second appointments got both John & I pretty excited, we really thought we were going to get an offer!  It was kind of a let down to read the feedback and see the "they love it but..." statements and know we weren't going to get an offer from either couple.  Sadly, the disappointment we would feel over not getting an offer is greatly overshadowed by the disappointment of getting a shitty offer.  A few weeks back we did get our first offer in, but it was insultingly low.  The couple offered us 30k less than what we were asking for.  Now at the time, our house had been up for a little over two months, we're anxious to move so we can get on with our lives, but we're far from "lets take any offer that crosses our plates".  Best part?  Their realtor told our realtor that their max price was 25k less than our asking price.  Really people? 

Lovely Cape-Cod, looking for a LTR...

So what has this whole process taught me so far?  There are a lot of reatlors out there who are complete ass hats.  I'm amazed with some of the feedback we get, for example the showing from Sunday left the following feedback "while the house is beautifully done, she does not want a Cape Cod".   Why in God's name are you showing your client a Cape Cod if she really doesn't want a Cape Cod?  Seeing it in person doesn't change the fact that it is a Cape Cod style house.  Or to another realtor, "my client really liked the house, but she needs to get comfortable with the area".  Why are you showing your client houses in a neighborhood that they don't like?  We've had realtors show up insanely late (the cape-cod lady was here 5 minutes after her one hour long appointment window ended) or some not show up at all.  At the end of the day we still live here!  Please respect our time by showing up on time, canceling appointments if you have no intention of coming and, above all, know your own client and don't show them something they would have ZERO interest in!  Ugh, it annoys me so much I even brought out the ctrl+B on that one.  Asshats (my guy excluded). 

As far as where we're looking to go, I'm started slowing down my searches on Realtor.com etc.  I've fallen in love with a number of houses, one in particular that's in Woodstown Borough, but I'm afraid to get too excited.  We've watched other houses we like be sold and we haven't even had a legit offer yet.  At this point I'm frustrated, but I'm trying to keep a good outlook.  John and I didn't expect to have the house on the market for less than a year, so to be in month 4 and to be this antsy is a little silly on my part.  I guess I didn't expect to have so much traffic through the house, which is why it is discouraging.  To have so many people come through and not one make a legit offer is what gets me down about the process.  We've had others leave awesome feedback ("top of their list, when do your clients want to close?" or "they love the house, keep us posted") but it hasn't turned into anything.  One of the appointments this past weekend, obviously not the one who hates cape-cods, expressed interest so time will only tell if anything comes out of that.  In the meantime, I'm trying to be patient!  

excited - the house is up!

We're no longer getting ready to list the house, the house is officially for sale!  As of last Friday our wonderful a little "Alimmatiris Estate" went up on the market.  Within a few hours of the listing two separate realtors contacted Joe about seeing our place.  Within hours!  So we had two showings on Saturday, one on Sunday and another one yesterday.   4 showings in 5 days in a crap economy, with our house being priced higher than the one down the block...  I'm cautiously optimistic, which in Andrea speak means "slightly less pessimistic than usual". But hey, so far so good.  I honestly was really worried the house was going to go up and we wouldn't get any hits at all, so I'm definitely pleasantly surprised.  If you're interested, take a peek at the listing.  Better yet, take a peek at the listing and then tell all of your friends who are looking to buy that they should buy the house because honestly, it is pretty great & the people who live there are freakishly awesome (so I hear) and the awesomeness is now apart of the house.  Seriously though, if you're looking for something in the Philadelphia area, give Big Joe a yell.  He came highly recommended by a woman I both trust and admire, and so far John & I love working with Joe & Stacey.  Now if I'm still sitting on this same couch in this very same living room in June 2013, I might have a slightly different opinion (Joe if you're reading this I'm only slightly kidding).

In other real estate related news, John & I are doing exactly what we shouldn't be doing and are obsessively searching through listings on Realtor.com for houses in NJ.  Though we won't be actively looking until we get an offer on the house, we are actively researching (researching = finding nice houses on Realtor.com then spending lots of hours in the car driving around South Jersey looking at the neighborhoods).  We're not sure exactly where we'll end up!  So far I'm leaning towards Swedesboro/Logan, Woodstown/Pilesgrove, & Mullica Hill to start.  Its rather ironic that 12 years ago all I could think of was getting the hell out of South Jersey.  Now I can't wait to get back.  Until Ari, I never realized how important it would be for me to be close to my family.  We spend almost every weekend driving back & forth to Alloway (about an hour and forty minute drive each way) so Ari can hang out with his aunts, YiaYia & Pops.

It wouldn't be a post without a picture of Ari, so here's the obligatory baby photo of the evening.  I was sitting on the floor messing around with my camera and he kept reaching over and trying to tap me on the head.  Actually what I interpreted as "I want to tap mom on the head" was probably more like "I want to rip mom's hair out by the roots", but whatever.  Anyway, he looked adorable peeking over the side of his pack & play, so I took a quick shot.  Don't you just want to eat his little face!