whiny baby tales

Selling a house is a nightmare. I just got off the phone with our Realtor, we have a weekly feedback phone meeting...no showings for us this past week, it seems the market is just real slow right now. Frustrating, but what can I do?




This neighborhood though has one new listing and 2 houses under contract this week. I asked what we can do to increase traffic to our house, get people inside to see how big this house is, basically we're all at a loss.




Of the two houses that are under contract, one is a bi-level which I personally hated living in. You have no choice but to always go up and down the stairs...there is really no main living level. The front yard was so-so looking, nothing to write home about but maybe the new owners to be like to landscape? The major thing this house has that we do not...a two car garage.




The second house, well the one I'm going to assume is under contract as there are 2 within a block of each other and I forgot the address that our Realtor told me, is a tri level. Again it's got a 2 car garage. Very nice looking yard as well. Hell, I'd probably chose to buy it over my house! LOL But the major difference, my house is DOUBLE the square footage than that pretty little tri level house. And even though we won't know the actual sales price until well after closing, I do know it was listed about $8000 less than my house. But come on...we're offering a HUGE house! Yes it's a one car garage, but we have the land to actually build a 2 car detached garage around the back yard. Or even to put a car port next to the garage. We have a HUGE lot, we're on a curve in the road. And it's a very quiet part of the subdivision.




I do know that backing up to apartments is a big downfall, but there is nothing I can do about that. Maybe if we hadn't taken down the forest of trees 5 years ago that would be helpful, but we did that to actually have a usable backyard for the daycare. Maybe we should build our own 8 foot fence since the one back there maintained by the apartment complex is looking super horribly shabby and about to fall down...but again we can't afford to put more money into this house. As it is, IF we get our current asking price, we're barely going to make back the money we put into this house over the last 3 years. No way are we going to make back all the money Mike has put into it in the past 11 years, but that's because we used a major portion of the equity to pay off our cars a few years ago. But still. We have to make money off this house!




We haven't dropped our price just yet, the Realtor hasn't felt it necessary yet. Mike and I are talking about it though...so we won't be shocked when it is brought up. We just need one family to need a 5 bedroom 2 bath 3000 square foot house for under $200,000. Just one family. I know that family is out there, and maybe God knows it would be too hard on us to have to move out right when Zachary is due to be born...maybe that family won't see our house and make an offer until Zachy arrives...but I sure need some traffic to lift my spirits. I hadn't cleaned up the house in a week because I'm so down on it...and today when I decided to go ahead and vacuum the family room, I burnt out the belt on my new vacuum! LOL I've only got 1/4 of the room left to vacuum, but still. I need to go to the store anyway, just don't wanna do anything when it's 95 degrees outside!




Any house selling tips from anyone???? Or do you know anyone that is moving to Colorado Springs that needs a nice big house? I promise it's really nice...new paint inside and out, new kitchen, gorgeous hardwood floors. It's a ranch that walks out to the huge back yard. If my family still lived here in CO I'd stay here longer...but you know, family and all.