<p>OHMom, yay for you!</p>
<p>I know I mentioned previously on this thread that my son and DIL were buying their first house. Well, they have been in about two weeks now and just got rid of their last boxes.</p>
<p>The good thing about moving is that it makes you purge all the stuff that seems to breed in every closet and on every shelf.</p>
<p>^^ The BIG clean up was when we moved from East to the West. We got rid of EVERY Thing except 100 boxes of “stuff” and a van full of “belongings”…^^^</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>When we prepared our house for sale, we purged a WHOLE bunch of stuff, so I thought we were in good shape. Still, when we moved, I kept telling DH, “HOW did we get so much STUFF?” Some of it was just junk, pure and simple. When we move into our new house, I’m sure there will still be more to purge.</p>
<p>My DH keeps holding on to a huge box full of old soccer trophies because he says the girls said they wanted to keep them. It’s my position that they will never really ever want them back or have room to store them, so we should just get rid of them. He keeps hanging on, though.</p>
<p>lol, nrd
200 years later, you will find those trophies got on to the antique show and the lady describe them as “my great great grandfarther’s trophies and I found the description on the archives of CC” ^^</p>
<p>Nrdsb4 – we had the same problem – so many trophies (mostly participation trophies). So we picked out some to the nicest ones to keep. I would rather teams gave medals – so much less room to store, LOL. Maybe your grand babies will play with the trophies someday.</p>
<p>Trophies–take a group photo of them (pretty impressive) and maybe keep one special one, then take the labels off and give them to Goodwill. Someone will recycle them or their parts (marble bases.)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That’s a very good idea. Thanks!</p>
<p>My mom’s East Bay area house in No. Cal. just got listed yesterday (Sat.) and had her first open house today (Sun.) with the broker tour scheduled for this coming Tues. </p>
<p>The realtor called me to say they had 90 groups of people come through it-- the most she has ever had in 1 day. She had to call her office for backup and they still could not talk to everyone who came in. There is only 1 other single family home listed in the same price range ($75K higher than my mom’s house). Offers won’t get considered until next Sat. at 5 PM. Hoping there are lots of them to look at!</p>
<p>Jshain, sounds very good.</p>
<p>Jshain- good luck. I was at a title company on Friday and the title officer said they had their busiest month opening new escrows in December in years. Also January was also busy and they had to hire 12 people. My location is central coast Ca.
A friend is looking for an entry house. The lowest price homes have jumped over 100000 in the past few months. Every house she views has had multiple offers and have gone for over the asking price.</p>
<p>I was extremely impressed at how the realtor staged my mom’s ranch style home. Some of the things she mentioned doing, in preparation of listing, I would not have considered. For example, she said to remove ANY family photographs from the walls, even though there was just one frame containing 3 photos. The other interesting idea was removing some of the more ornate French Provincial pieces and making the home look more contemporary. Even though the home didn’t have a cluttered look beforehand, she pointed out that a prospective buyer would be a younger couple/family since my mom’s house was at the lower price point for single family residences in the area. She sprinkled in more contemporary accents, giving the home a much more updated appearance to (hopefully) attract a younger buyer. </p>
<p>It was nice not having to hire a stager…</p>
<p>jshain – I think you will have a few offers to look at. It is a seller’s market in the East Bay. Best of luck to you, and let us know what happens!</p>
<p>I was hoping we would be able to move back to California in a few years. The way things are going, though, I expect we will be priced out of the Bay Area.</p>
<p>Only $135 million in Dallas --and the present owner lets President Bush use his heli-pad.</p>
<p>[Live</a> Next to President Bush for $135 Million - Local News - Dallas/Fort Worth, TX - Dallas/Fort Worth, TX | NBC News](<a href=“http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/50600582/ns/local_news-dallas_fort_worth_tx/]Live”>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/50600582/ns/local_news-dallas_fort_worth_tx/)</p>
<p>^^^^^^D2 went to school with one of the occupants of that house. She arrived to work on a group project and was directed to go to the student’s room upstairs. She got lost among all the many corridors. She had to call the student to come find her.</p>
<p>Very nice family, otherwise extremely low key about their wealth in spite of the enormous scale of the home.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That is for sure. Tom H would show up at the (private) high school games on Friday nights sitting on the uncomfortable seats and having a ball. Not a fashion plate either. He did fund a new gym for the school.</p>
<p>IMO–the fact that Texas has a 10 acre homested exemption had a lot to do with the size of the acreage.</p>
<p>Good luck on sorting through all the offers, jshain.</p>
<p>Some parts of the Bay Area are experiencing very high demand with very low inventory (sound familiar?)</p>
<p>DH and I bought our fixer-upper a year ago. I’ve watched the MLS since then and only a handful of single-family homes have come on the market in our part of town. Nothing has come up that we would have considered buying. There have been a few off-market sales, but pickings have been very slim. If we hadn’t found our FSBO we’d still be renting and waiting.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Don’t say that, Fremont and Walnut Creek are pretty hot right now. Even my CCC “little house on the prairie” commended about 12 offers, I picked the highest cash offer, but had I gone with FHA, I would have made 5% more on the price. Its hard in my area to find some one who had 700 in credit score and I just could not get over that fear.</p>
<p>Not sure what I said? Sounds like we are in solid agreement to me.</p>
<p>It took 3 hours to go through all the offers on my mom’s house. All of them were considerably over asking price. We are in escrow with an all-cash offer with 2 others in back-up.</p>
<p>Sweet…congrats.</p>