Thought horribly naively that packing up our furniture and stuff after 33 years and selling our house would be a breeze......
1. Couldn’t find a house we liked
2. Made two whirlwind trips to New England, driving 30 hours total, and then 12 hour marathon of house looking in the area we wanted, all in the space of three days.
3. Chose the house we wanted and made an offer. Broker told us that New Englanders didn’t require much more. Five offers down the road, lasting more than 8 weeks, at the point where we were about to just give up, they finally accepted our offer.
4. Had to have the front yard dug up in the spring to put in a new pump and everything, and almost exceeded the escrow to have this done
5. Needed renters to make the mortgage
6. Cooking stove died in the first 3 months,
7. Refrigerator died in the next three months, Hot water heater died. Discovered that our agent was dishonest and was trying to get the renters out of the lease that we were paying him to maintain for us, so that he could sell them a house. We finally terminated his services.
8. Put our country cabin up for sale, and shortly there after the bubble burst on real estate, and no one was interested in a country cabin.
9. Had to lower the price of the cabin to the point that our capital gains tax when we sold it wouldn’t even need to be paid to the feds
10. Our broker was in cahoots with the local septic digging firm. The property was pretty big but nowhere would it pass perk for a normal septic system. Our broker had already known this, but got a rake off from the digger, so we wasted 1400 bucks on a fruitless search
11. Had to pay a soil scientist and a Professional engineer for a preliminary study to put in a drip irrigation system, for anther $1000.
12. Still no takers when potential buyers knew that putting in septic would cost them $40,000
13. Finally sold the property after two years and a new more honest broker for just barely what we paid for the property 13 years before.
14. Continued to renovate the other property, but started in ernest after the country property was sold, and since it was sold for $74,000 less than we’d hoped, it meant that the property we lived in had to be perfectly renovated.
15. In November of 2010, the pump died for the well, and everything including the connection that had to be back-hoed into had to be replaced to the tune of $3000. I got a $100 senior citizen discount
16. Two days later, I stopped to see how the roofers were doing on the house, put the Jeep Wrangler in gear, and put on the brake, started to step out of the jeep, it popped out of gear, brake let go, car knocked me to the ground under it, and I rolled out as fast as I could, and it clipped my leg instead of rolling right over my chest, rolled down the hill and into the side of my house, totally the jeep and causing 3000 bucks damage to the side of my house.
17. Repair guy for the house needed to repair the brick but used gray mortar rather than white mortar, so it had to be torn out
Repairs guy again used gray mortar instead of white, and it had to be torn out again
18. Repair took 6 months to accomplish and I missed the deadline on getting 500 bucks back for getting it done early
19. Second set of renters in the house we bought turned out to be renters from hell. We needed their rent payment to make our mortgage payment, and only two times were they less than15 days late on the rent
20. Renters tried to get us to sign a federal FHA 0 interest loan saying that they were never late on their rent
20.5. Finally put the house up for sale after renovating it to new condition. No one was interested. Had to lower the price $20000 below what was already a way way reduced price from the boom times ----JUST to get people to look at it
21. Finally got a sale, but the buyers hired a crooked inspector who claimed that our deck was old and didn’t have pressure treated wood(he couldn’t tell the difference between green pine pressure treated, and brown douglas fir PT). They demanded all kinds of stuff in a house that we had already renovated to what would have cost nearly $45000 if I had to pay someone. But since there are few buyers in the area, we had to take what they wanted.
22. Buyers wanted us out of the house with our 25,000 lb. of stuff in 42 days---very very hard for a couple of 60 year olds.
23. Informed renters that they needed to get out of the retirement house. Luckily they failed to send their contract back so they were month to month “at will tenants”, and had already told them early in the summer that they might have to leave in the fall. They cried and said they couldn’t leave.
24. Offered them no rent for October if they were out by the 15th, this had little effect on them, they still said they couldn’t find anything to go to
25. Had to contact a lawyer and pay for the start of eviction procedures, including a visit by the sheriff. Still didn’t faze them.
26. Arranged to have our furniture moved by moving company on October 21, hoping the renters would be out by the 18.
27. Renters said they would get out by the 24, after agent told them the horrible things that would happen to them
28. Since closing is the 26th and we have to be there for that, we then had to move all our furniture into a separate factuality to the tune of an additional $650, but since they weren’t going to get out by the 15th, we would use their rent to pay for this additional cost
29. Renters suddenly moved out on the 15th, and we have to eat this additional cost.
30. Since we didn’t trust that the renters would move out(they always lied before), we had to make arrangements to move in with friends with our dog and neurotic cat for period between closing and moving into the house.
31. Have to make two trips to New England in addition to the very very expensive 53 foot moving van traveling 642 miles, to take up the trailer with the snow thrower and the riding mower, and stuff we don’t want the mover to take, and then come back again to bring back a helper for the driving and then drive up again with our sailboat.
32. After a four year odyssey, we hope to finally be in our retirement home on November 14, 2011.
This was just the highlights. Didn't talk about all the tribulations of completely renovating ahouse, the stuff that didn't work, the stuff that went wrong and had to be redone, etc. etc. etc.
Didn't talk about all the stuff everybody has to do to get ready to retire in June of 2010, or the vacation we didn't take in summer of 2010 just in case we had buyers.
Didn’t even talk about the 42 day nightmare packing job and the 250 bucks worth of boxes or the fact that from May of 2010 to May of 2011, we had no evening, no weekend, no holiday, no personal day free that we didnt work on bringing the house up to new condition, adding a whole new bathroom from nothing, a new laundry room from nothing, two whole new rooms downstairs, and a 10 x 40 foot deck all across the back of the house. And my wife of 38 years and I did everything ourselves except for the new roof and the new well system. Aren't talking about living now in an empty house sleeping on an air mattress.
Nothing worth getting is easy we keep saying
None of it sounds fun.
