Thanks for your advice everyone. My son is going to be in temporary housing for a month and while they are there they will look for a place to live. Crazy right? They are waiting until the last moment to find a place to live. Nuts. I’m a planner and they are just going with the flow. Funny!
A month or even a week will give your kids plenty of time to find an apartment. I just walked past several buildings that had “now leasing” signs. It is not like Boston or SF where such hunt needs to involve a realtor.
Thank you so much!!
I haven’t seen the owner for many years.
He finally sold his house.
Now this is a great house!
The property tax is going to be around $250,000 a year.
Well, this dude has a $500K property tax bill due in 4 weeks (the second half is due in November):
Bill Gates is wealthier. 
Lol. Even though he is wealthy, he periodically protests his property assessment.
(That reminds me that I have to pay my own property taxes. )
Lol!
How about this little California getaway? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z-V0Tn43_lA
An update on our house sale – as you might have seen a few pages ago, we are selling our house in the Houston area after living in it for 23 years. The particular area we live in is in a desirable location (good schools, easy access to the medical center, downtown, etc.) and there is very low inventory right now.
As a side note, we have updated our house gradually over the time we’ve lived in it – getting rid of anything brass, updated the bathrooms and kitchen, changed out every light fixture, toilet, appliance, and on and on. We even replaced our kitchen island countertop in the fall with Carrera marble with a 5-burner gas stainless cooktop (which was entirely for us because we hadn’t planned on selling at that point). So, even though the house is 23 years old there are many features that compete with new construction. Even with this, we still spent quite a bit of time cleaning out closets, making 75 trips to Goodwill, painting walls, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning!
We listed our house for sale last Wednesday and planned to have an Open House for 2 hours on Saturday and 2 hours on Sunday. Between listing and this past Wednesday (1 week later) we had 23 showings of our house apart from the Open Houses and on Saturday 30 groups of people viewed it and 20 groups of people viewed it on Sunday. Our agent had noted in the listing that we would not be accepting offers until after the weekend.
We listed our house for $775,000 and on Monday we received 8 offers – 3 of which were over asking price! We selected the top 4 offers and invited them to each improve their offer (offering specific terms we wanted to see changed). All 4 resubmitted improved offers and we selected one. Not only was this the highest offer (more than $30,000 over asking price) but the family wrote a lovely letter about what they liked about the house. We liked selecting someone who was emotionally invested in the house because we thought they would want to do whatever it took to make this deal work even if small hiccups occur.
Now we have to get through inspection without any major issues. Although we have kept everything repaired as needed, you never know what might be found in a 23 year old house. And of course, this family selected a professional engineer with a scary website that shows improper construction that can cause a house to collapse. We’re really hoping this inspector isn’t going to find things and make them sound worse than they are. But at least if this doesn’t work out, we know there are a lot of other people out there who would be interested.
It’s been a wild week! It was so odd having all these strangers walking through our house. But it was flattering when several people asked our agent who staged our house – they weren’t expecting that it was the homeowner!
Blackeyedsusan, you did a great job with the house. Congrats. Where are you moving?
Don’t they always do that? When we sold our first house, it was relatively new (5 years old), and the buyer’s inspector said the utility room door didn’t open/close properly. I walked over to it, opened it, shut it, opened it, shut it, and had absolutely NO clue what he was talking about!
Congrats on your quick sale! Are you moving out of Houston or downsizing?
Congarts on successful sale! Nice that it didn’t drag on months.
Wow! Congrats, blackeyedsusan!!
As an aside, I somehow got on the email list for some of the real estate sites when DS and fiancee were shopping. Got the eupdated email re: their house-- its now listed as “SOLD”!! They went over yesterday and opened a bottle of champagne.
Where are you moving, blackeyedsusan?
Aww, don’t you love youthful exuberance? I don’t remember doing anything at all after we closed on our last house. I just remember being glad we didn’t run into the sellers.
We’re staying in Houston and moving only a few miles away. We’re downsizing to a 3 story 3 bedroom townhouse (with an elevator!) that’s within walking distance to shops and restaurants. It’s walkable to Highland Village http://www.shophighlandvillage.com/ and the new River Oaks District that’s opening up in a few months http://www.riveroaksdistrict.com/
It seems like everytime oil drops the housing market takes a beating in Texas so it’s a good thing you got out!
NRdsb4,
I wanted a photo of him carrying her across the threshold, but apparently that didn’t happen (the carrying or the photo).
jym, did they carry a bag of rice or a cat into the house first?
I think they carried the champagne and 2 glasses!