Be patient with my back story here; I promise that there's relevance . . .
We first decided to put our house on the market back in early 2009 when we were pregnant with Olivia. This was right before the housing market really burst into flames. We priced way too high and had a poor realtor to boot. There was little to no interest, and within a couple of months, we were re-decorating the guestroom into a nursery and giving up our ability to comfortably host overnight guests. We tried our hand that summer at the For Sale by Owner route with a much more reasonable price but no more luck. Soon, Olivia was here and the house went off the market again.
But, once we were settled into a routine with her, the desire to find a more desirable house became much stronger. Our house is nice but is lacking in several elements that we really want, such as a backyard, a fourth and perhaps fifth bedroom, and a playroom. Our original plan was to move to a bigger house in the same neighborhood where we currently reside because we really love this neighborhood. We even put a contingency offer on a house that we loved in our neighborhood during our first attempt at selling the house. Our offer was turned down, which was extremely disappointing at the time but has turned out to be a good thing (or perhaps a moot point).
When we decided last March to put the house on the market with a realtor again, we had made a key realization about our neighborhood that we had just not paid sufficient attention to before: the school in our neighborhood is not very good and not some place we want to send our kids, so we were left with the options of leaving the neighborhood or putting our kids into private school. We chose the former and found a new neighborhood still in our city but that had a much better elementary school.
When we put our house on the market, we also started to look for houses that we might be interested in purchasing. We finally found one that we really loved, and then it turned out to be the childhood home of a good friend's mother. We felt that it was a perfect fit and immediately made a contingency offer that was accepted. I was so excited to be moving into this wonderful old house. But, as the deadline for selling our house drew nearer and nearer it was becoming very clear that our house was not going to sell in time despite being listed at what we felt was a very reasonable price. Soon enough, the deal fell through, and in the meantime we became less and less sure of the area we had picked because though the elementary school was good, the junior high is not, and the high school is not much better.
It turns out that none of the high schools in the entire city where we live are rated very well, which is shocking to me. While high school is not in our near future, it is a definite part of our future. So, after much prayer and conversation, we decided to leave our beloved city for a much smaller town that is within a 15 minute drive of our city. This new town has very little in terms of amenities, but it has a wonderful school system, much more reasonable housing, and the ability to purchase a nice chunk of land for those interested in such things.
However, despite having picked out a location where we would like to move (and we have been settled on moving to this area for a good six months now), I have adamantly refused to go look at houses. I've already fallen in love with two houses only to have to walk away from them. I don't want to do that again. And, knowing that a contigency offer is not the best route, looking at houses before an offer has ever been made feels like going to a bakery and looking at all the amazing treats only to be told that I will have to wait until some unknown date in the future to get to try anything and that I will just have to hope they have the same selection then. So, we have not looked at any houses since last spring.
Tomorrow though we have two showings on our house, and both are second viewings of the house. Barney is very confident that we will sell our house in the next three months at the price we just moved to. While I haven't looked at any houses, Barney regularly peruses the available selection online, and he has become very interested in going to look. I am still uninterested in looking. Actually, I am very uninterested in looking. Barney has persisted in attempting to excite me about going out to look, which is not something that he has really attempted at all in the past year.
So today I agreed to go out early next week. It was not an easy decision, and I am still not at the place I need to get myself to before we go look. However, I feel that ultimately looking at the houses is more important to him than not looking is to me. Thus we will go, and I have at least two days to work on getting my game face on and to give my self-pep talks the old college try.
In the meantime, we have been hard at work fixing and organizing our house to the best of our ability and as economically as possible. Selling this house would be a major step for us and a huge answer to prayer. I will keep you posted :)
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