Here’s hoping that’s how it goes with my house!
Me too! Though we started work on our addition right as the prices for building materials shot up. Probably still got the better end of the deal.
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We are not going to do a lot of improvements or putting much money into it. We’ve been working towards this goal over the past three years, so all the expensive things were done. In this market now, I would not spend much on improvements, demand is so great.
We are doing a slight downsizing, the total finished square footage is about the same. We are moving from a 4 bedroom two-story with a basement to a three-bedroom ranch with no basement. Most of the work is clearing out 20 years of accumulated junk. Also getting the yard and landscaping attractive as possible.
The yard is a big motivation to sell. We are cutting the yard size by 2/3. When we were young and bought this house 20 years ago, we both loved to work outside in the yard. We got a professional landscape plan but did almost all the work ourselves. We planted over 200 trees, shrubs, and bushes in the front and back. 20 years later, we are constantly, pruning, cutting down, and pulling out overgrown shrubbery.
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We are waiting a bit but are ready to get pre-approved and start looking.
Our plan is similar in that we will buy the new house, move out of this one over time and do the improvements necessary, then sell the current one. I expect we may overlap by 9-12 months.
We are in no hurry other than we would love to be in a bigger space right now (tiny row house with too many people). Houses are barely being posted before having contracts, most in less than a day. I am just not that cutthroat so we will wait a bit more.
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That literally was us last week.
My wife has been looking online daily for months. Last Wednesday morning, a house in our target neighborhood in our price range came onto the market. They were taking buyer’s offers until 11:59 PM that Friday.
We looked at the house on Wednesday night, on Thursday we were working with our real estate agent on offer and on Friday we presented our best offer, $5K over asking price and no contingencies. The agent didn’t think we stood a chance but late on Monday we got the news our office was accepted.
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No joke, when we were shopping for our current house we were looking for really cheap with a bit of elbow room (about an acre). We live in the exurbs now so that was obtainable then. Even someplace that was barely livable that we could live in while DH built our real house on a different area of the property was fine. One house, the fridge was at a 30 degree angle because it was falling through the floor. I couldn’t make that up. I was so traumatized, I wrote off the whole town. Several years later we drove by and it seems the neighbor bought it, tore it down and now had a bigger yard.
Congrats on a new house. No 
For missing Disney
Thanks, but I’m thinking strategically.
The smaller and newer house will mean less time doing work and save us money in the long run.
More free time and money for leisurely pursuits.
Also qualifying for a mortgage on a second house has shown DW that we do have the financial ability to have a vacation home, maybe in Florida, maybe Central Florida, maybe in the Lake Buena Vista area.
Short-term pain could lead to long-term gain. 
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We’re doing the opposite. We’re going from maybe 1/3 acre to 7 1/4 acres, and doubling our square footage. We’re in Texas, we only know how to go bigger! 
We definitely need to do a little work in our yard, mostly just weeding, perhaps a bit of pruning, to get it ready. We remodeled the whole house 5 years ago, so anything that needs to be done/fixed is relatively minor. It really could use a new coat of paint, but I would prefer to leave that for the buyers to deal with!
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Nice!!! The housing market is hot here too. Our house we bought here one year ago is up in value by over $100,000
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First impressions are lasting impressions. You want to make your house as attractive as possible from the start.
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DM was able to sell her house over the asking price and they didn’t even blink when the water came back positive for arsenic. 
Me “Oh, they’re ok that you’re poisoning them?”
DM “I guess so. It wasn’t super high but enough the realtor told me to use bottled water until I move out”
So, yeah, really not much point in fixing things. Let the buyers handle it. And then they’ll get the colors or whatever they’d want anyway. Or lack of poison. 
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Cool. Saying goodbye to Texas next week. Hello PA, here we come!
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Welcome to PA! It’s a beautiful state. Lots of parks, rivers, creeks, and lakes!
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Lotta PA representation here. I don’t think I realized you were there. I had you in Ohio for some reason?
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Nope. Susquehanna Valley PA.
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We are just north of Philly in Montgomery County.
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That’s Central/South, right? It’s a beautiful part of the state, from what I remember, with rolling hills 
I will be in Western PA, near Pittsburgh.
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When we went in November, my husband was pressing buttons and the Imperial questioned if he knew how many others touched those buttons, and he is pressing them?! Implying to the fact that we were in a pandemic, of course. It was all in character and quite fun.
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I’m a PA girl, too! Eastern, though. An hour north of Philly.
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We are probably fairly close to each other then. 
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