September 2011
Our first step was talking to a realtor to get an idea of
what our house was worth and how much a smaller downsized house would
cost. We knew a great realtor from the
softball team, and he is a real “numbers guy” who helped to crunch things
down. Frankly we didn’t know what we
wanted in a smaller home, and Mike was the most patient realtor in the world
showing us our options and what kind of a place $XXX would buy. Really debated between a condo apartment vs a
townhouse and Mike showed us everything.
Since we loved our house – the openness and welcoming feel –
our biggest fear was selling it and then being at the mercy of whatever smaller
happened to be on the market to buy. We
just didn’t want to settle. We knew our
existing house would sell, so we decided to find the smaller place first then
put our current house on the market. We
were able to arrange construction financing in the event we didn’t find a
suitable smaller home, built the cottage first, then sold. We also considered the possibility of renting
short-term if there was nothing worth buying when the cottage was
finished. And then who knows if / how
long we’ll even need a little place in the city. Many of our neighbours up there commute every
day. We were really facing a lifestyle
change too – not just a change of address.
So we just decided to keep all our options open and see what turned up.
In the interim, I started fixing up our house in preparation
to sell. We had kept it up over the
years, installing hardwood floors, relatively new furnace, etc. Had the master bath ensuite done in Nov 2010
– all in neutral colours knowing we would eventually sell. We had such glorious fall weather I was able
to focus on the outside. Stained the
back deck, cleaned up the garden and made little rock planting areas, had the
front walkway levelled, and painted the garage door (thank you to Maritza’s
ex-friends for egging our house – I really had nothing better to do…).
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment