Our boat!

[ivanhoe]

I'm starting a thread here because as I "surf" the forum I've noticed how many people are in virtually the same "boat" as my wife and myself. So please, if you fit the following description, add some support with whatever is happening in your life-how things are progressing-and any helpful hints you might want to pass along to people in our current predicament.

You must be: nearing retirement (within the next 12 months), attempting to sell your home in order to acquire one in the Villages, not considering part time residence in TV.

Maybe we can meet some day over a glass of wine and laugh about how we "sweated out" this transition!

I'll start. We are staging our condo apartment in New York and running into that problem of getting rid of stuff collected for thirty years, while watching the skies for that first....I can't say it. :eek:

[borjo]

.....Frozen precipitation, white in color........

[Virtual Geezer]

A heavy form of partly cloudy.

[collie1228]

ivanhoe, we are in a similar situation. We live in a townhouse in Central NY, and plan to retire in 2012 as soon as we can sell the house, then buy a new courtyard villa in TV. We are currently doing some updates and cleanup, and as soon as we can clean out the basement (wow, I'm such a pack rat), we should be good to sell. Over the winter we plan to continue to clean out closets and donate as much as possible to the Rescue Mission. Then, on May 1, we plan to list the house with a realtor. A couple weeks before listing, we will have a dumpster and a PODS type moving container in the driveway. Most of everything is going into one or the other, hopefully less in the moving container and more in the dumpster. I'm hoping my employer will be offering exit packages to volunteers in the next six months, but in any event, our plan is to be out of here in the Summer, so this should be our last winter in the snow capital of the USA. Hooray - we see the light at the end of the tunnel! And a glass of wine and a laugh sounds great to us, as long as we can do it at Urban Flatts (or whatever they call it now) on a nice Summer evening in 2012 in TV. Good luck on your quest.

[ivanhoe]

ivanhoe, we are in a similar situation. We live in a townhouse in Central NY, and plan to retire in 2012 as soon as we can sell the house, then buy a new courtyard villa in TV. We are currently doing some updates and cleanup, and as soon as we can clean out the basement (wow, I'm such a pack rat), we should be good to sell. Over the winter we plan to continue to clean out closets and donate as much as possible to the Rescue Mission. Then, on May 1, we plan to list the house with a realtor. A couple weeks before listing, we will have a dumpster and a PODS type moving container in the driveway. Most of everything is going into one or the other, hopefully less in the moving container and more in the dumpster. I'm hoping my employer will be offering exit packages to volunteers in the next six months, but in any event, our plan is to be out of here in the Summer, so this should be our last winter in the snow capital of the USA. Hooray - we see the light at the end of the tunnel! And a glass of wine and a laugh sounds great to us, as long as we can do it at Urban Flatts (or whatever they call it now) on a nice Summer evening in 2012 in TV. Good luck on your quest.

Best of luck to you too collie1228. I'm not really thrilled with trying to coordinate our retirements and selling the place at the same time.
We expect to be out on May 1, 2012 and our place will be up starting in January of 2012. So here goes.

[Trish Crocker]

Ivanhoe, we too are in the same boat. House has been on the market for 2 months...one showing. Once the house is sold everything will go easier, just need to get past this hurdle. Steve and I will be happy to share that glass of vino with you...frankly, we can't wait!

[mjdollard]

Ivanhoe

Almost the same boat - I retired, she will soon. Then upstate NY is in the rear view mirror

[Bigben007]

Ivanhoe

In the same boat. We are in the process of painting, cleaning out the house, basement etc., We plan of putting the house up April 1, 2012. As soon as it sells, we're out of here. Hope to see you next summer.

[Posh 08]

http://i1223.photobucket.com/albums/dd502/posh2008/2011-10-31_13-46-22_641.jpg

Same boat. Nobody coming out to the rural areas to buy mountain views like this.

[cmfjr]

We just went through retiring and selling our home in WI. We close tomorrow but let me tell you it took 7 months to get to this point. We started to declutter and down size after we put together a time line. This took a lot of time and dedication as it is easy to keep things we "might use some day"! The plan outlined what was going to the CYV and what we would get rid of. Once the home was empty of every thing of no longer use we hired a stager who helped select the colors of paint and other furniture, light & plumbing fixtures to update the property. Once done we researched selling prices of comp properities a d interviewed several real estate agents. Selecting the right agent can be difficult as they All promise they are the "one" who will get your property sold. Today it is price, price and price not location! We had 3 offers with in 5 weeks. They got into a bidding war and we are getting more than our asking price. One word of warning, make sure All repairs are done prior to going on the market as the buyers inspectors will identify it and it could slow down an already long process or they might walk. We all know they are more sellers than buyers. I hope this helps those still in the boat.

[ivanhoe]

Thanks all...looks like we'll have a good size group for wine!

Currently my wife and I have three piles of "stuff"..."No"-"Yes"-"Maybe" as we try to "triage" our way though the accumulated. The apartment will sell fully furnished or it will be disposed of. We will not be moving much!
We will attempt to sell the place ourselves (and we don't have a clue) so the library card is getting a real work out along with the PC.

One thing we did do recently was pick up an "Apple airport" to play all our music through iTunes on the computer. This makes the CD / DVD player wi-fi and we can play all throughout the apartment. The 250 CD's are history. :wave:

[ladydoc]

Thanks all...looks like we'll have a good size group for wine!

Currently my wife and I have three piles of "stuff"..."No"-"Yes"-"Maybe" as we try to "triage" our way though the accumulated. The apartment will sell fully furnished or it will be disposed of. We will not be moving much!
We will attempt to sell the place ourselves (and we don't have a clue) so the library card is getting a real work out along with the PC.

One thing we did do recently was pick up an "Apple airport" to play all our music through iTunes on the computer. This makes the CD / DVD player wi-fi and we can play all throughout the apartment. The 250 CD's are history. :wave:

No matter how much you think you are getting rid of, you will still take too much!!

We tried selling, did not happen, so we rented out the old house and bought one here. We were not going to let the house own us and fortunately, renting was a great option for us. Don't stress about selling...it will happen when it happens. Don't let a potential buyer smell urgency on you unless you are willing to do what a lot of folks had to do...lower the price to the point where it hurt, but at the price it will sell.

There are so many houses going up here....and they go up very quickly. There will always be a place for you here when you are ready. I hope you sell quickly and if doing it yourself is going to be too difficult, get a realtor and negoiate their percentage. Given the marketplace, they may well come down in their percentage. If you have to come down in price, they have to come down in commission.

Best of luck and we hope to see you here soon!

[784caroline]

ladydoc hit the real message.......Get rid of anything in question. WE packed out 2 PODS headed for a designer and we could have used less.

[ivanhoe]

We were not going to let the house own us...

Yes I like that one! Thanks.

It is a condo after all and I probably could rent and control it from TV.

[Posh 08]

We were not going to let the house own us...

Yes I like that one! Thanks.

It is a condo after all and I probably could rent and control it from TV.

You'll be having some wine with your TV group in no time. Please save me some.

[ivanhoe]

You'll be having some wine with your TV group in no time. Please save me some.

With that view, I expect you'll win the race!

[Bigben007]

Thanks for the info, let me ask about staging. Was it expensive and do you think it's worth it? We did have a realitor come and give us suggestions what to do to get the house ready, but I do think we need it staged. We just put money on a lot in Fernandina on Killington Loop. But we aren't putting our house up until April 1. I"m excited but also nervous.

[ivanhoe]

I"m excited but also nervous.
Bigben007

Both are a good things!

Staging is a concept that I didn't get at first. The idea is to make a buyer want to be in the space. I thought my wife was nuts when she told me what was to go out! But she watches all those "flipping house" shows and she really does have the right ideas!

Everything personal is removed so the perspective buyer can see their stuff in the space...somewhat like a motel room but a bit more inviting for a longer stay.

Clean, neat...as generic as you can live in for awhile. No family pictures etc. Tone down all color schemes. Vanilla bean food flavoring in water in the mirco-wave! (or popcorn)...low music.

I'm not spending a lot of money. Just making sure everything looks good on first impression.

We like to think our location and amenities will help sell the place...kind of like TV sold us!!