Whirlwind Summer Part 1: Selling our House

When we moved to Champaign for Mike's JD/MBA we bought our first home.  We decided on the University of Illinois and moved in less than two weeks (if I remember right), so we hadn't found anywhere to live before we arrived.  Mike was pretty set on buying, so we needed a little time to look around.  After about three days of looking, we found a nice little place in a safe and friendly neighborhood. Thankfully we had some amazing friends (who we met only once before) who let us live at their places for nearly a month (we'll mention some of them again in Part 3 of this series) while we waited to close on our new house.

We really enjoyed having our own place, though during some of the stressful times that come with selling a house there were times I wish we had just rented.  Fortunately everything had a happy ending.

In the months approaching the selling time, I read several books on selling For Sale By Owner and was convinced that we could do it and do it well.  I had hoped to have the house on the market in late March, but the last couple months of the semester got busy for Mike, so we didn't have the house ready until late May.  Since we waited so long (and for a few other reasons), we decided to go with a realtor.  The one we chose had it in the contract that if we found our own buyer we would not have to pay a commission, which was nice even though we didn't end up finding our own buyer.

Keeping the house immaculate wasn't as bad as I thought.  We had put about half of our stuff in storage (at our awesome friends' house) when we staged the house.  I packed up the majority of the toys, so we wouldn't have to keep cleaning them up.  Every time I left the house I tried to make sure it was show-worthy.  Most often we had over 2 hours of notice before a showing.  About half of the time we had a day's notice.

While keeping the house ready-to-show was do-able, it wasn't super fun, so when a friend was looking for someone to house-sit while her family was on vacation, I gladly volunteered.  The next week we house-sat for someone else.  During this time Mike was spending 10-12 hours a day studying for the Bar, so we didn't see very much of him.

At the end of our two weeks of house-sitting (which was just over a month after we listed our house), we got an offer.  They were in a hurry and wanted to close in two weeks.  They had connections with a mortgage company and made it happen.  We were out of our house and closed on it just days before Mike flew to California to take the Bar exam.  It was a little rushed and crazy, but way worth it.  We feel so blessed that it sold so quickly.

For the sake of the record (and the curious reader), here are some pictures of our house as we staged it.

LIVING ROOM

BEDROOM #1

BEDROOM #2

BEDROOM #3

BATHROOM

KITCHEN

PANTRY

MUDROOM

GARAGE

BACKYARD