Moving to California (Part 2: Selling our home)

We love our home in Herriman, Utah. When we bought this house 2 years ago, our plan was to stay here for at least 5 years. We planned on having all our kids here (which is especially nice since we live only minutes from the hospital where my OB and our pediatrician all work). We worked on making this house more homey, recently finishing the basement so we'd have more space for out-of-town visitors and spending time and money to decorate each room to fit our style. I've always liked this house, but I had begun to REALLY love our home. Moving out was NOT in the plans.

So when Andrew told me this CRAZY idea for him to get his real estate license, move out to California, and work with my dad and aunt in the family business, I was in shock. I didn't want to move.

If you haven't read my post on how we came to the decision to move, you should probably go back and read that.

Now, after having made the decision, we had to start putting things in motion to sell our beautiful home. We met with multiple realtors and tried to feel out who would be the best fit for us and our situation. We finally decided on Duane, an agent who had recently hired my brother-in-law, Bobby, to do some video marketing for him. Duane had some impressive experience and was the go-getter that we needed. He told us (like all the other agents we had met with) that comps were showing our house would probably sell in the low 350s. But when we told him we were hoping for closer to 360k, he said he liked a challenge and we set the price at $359,900.

We signed with Duane on a Thursday night.
Cleaned like crazy and had the photographer snap pictures of our home on Friday.
Our house went up for sale on Friday night.
Saturday at 6:30 pm we had our first showing.
Saturday around 9 pm, Duane called me.

"I'm calling to put a smile on your face," he said. "You already have an offer on your house!"

What!?!? Crazy!!!

"It's a full-price offer," he explained, "but they don't have a pre-approval letter at this time, so we aren't going to accept the offer just yet. Let's see if anyone else puts in an offer and maybe we can get a bidding war to drive up the price."

I was so giddy with the news. Full price! That was incredible since everyone else had said we wouldn't be able to sell that high. 

But then I got a little greedy... "Well, if there was so much interest from just that first showing, we must be priced right (or too low?) and we will surely have tons of showings and offers. I can only imagine the possibilities!!!!"

Well, imagine I did, but surprisingly we didn't have another request for a showing. No more showings. No more offers. I had to reign back my giddy greediness and accept that we really had received an amazing offer. We were getting exactly what we had asked for and it had happened so quickly. 

We accepted the offer with joy and started packing since we'd only have 30 days before closing. 

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Well, of course things can't run perfectly smooth, so a few days later we got a bomb dropped on us. It turns out that getting solar panels on our home a year ago was a bad idea. A very terrible, expensive, bad idea. 

We had been told by multiple solar salesmen that solar would add value to our home (lie #1) and that it would be easy to transfer the payments to a new owner if we were to sell our house (lie #2).   It turns out that solar is a new factor in real estate, and a lot of people don't know how to handle it. It adds zero value to the home, and buyers can refuse to take on the payment which means the seller would have to pay out the rest of the solar loan... in our case, almost $15k! 

This news made me sick. No, really, I was physically ill. I had to cancel a dinner date with friends because I could not muster up the energy nor the enthusiasm to see anyone. It was a miserable night. But then the next day brought a little ray of sunshine. Duane called and informed us that he had talked to the buyer's agent and they were willing to work on a deal. They'd want the refrigerator, washer and dryer, the couches and our bedroom furniture (minus the mattress), but they were willing to pay for half of the solar cost. 

Hallelujah!!!!  This helped ease the sting to our wallets as we drew near the end of our time in Herriman.

The contract specified that we had 30 days until closing, so on December 17 we had family and friends come to the house to load up the moving truck. Then bright and early on December 18 we loaded up the kids and said goodbye to Utah to travel to our new home in California. My mom drove the Mini Cooper and caravaned with me and the babies. Andrew and his brother, Bobby, drove in the moving truck.  After a long day of travel, we arrived to my parent's house (our new home for the next few months until our townhome is finished).

The first week here has been crazy. Between moving, unpacking, Christmas celebrations, and family visits it has been an exhausting week. But we are excited to be surrounded by family and entering a new stage in our lives.