Things got pretty exciting on Thursday and Friday of this week. We got our first offer but it was very low: $785K offer against the list price of $825K. Only one house in our neighborhood had sold for more than $800K and I believe that our house was definitely worth more than $800K. But those comps… Before I was able to talk to my realtor, we received our second offer: $807K. Whew! Much better. So my realtor went back to the first buyer and told them the news and they raised their offer to $810K – yep, they went up $25K! Turns out the second buyer had put an escalation clause in their offer, so it automatically was raised to $2K over the other offer: $812K. And to make things just a bit more crazy, I was out of the house because we were having a third buyer viewing our home as this was going on! So my realtor called the third buyer’s realtor and told them what was happening. They weren’t ready to make an offer quickly, so we accepted the $812K offer. What a bit of excitement! And Jim and I are quite satisfied with all aspects of the offer.

So our house was on the market for about 3 weeks, we had 2 open houses with 22 groups attending, and 13 individual showings. It takes me at least 2 hours to prep/restore the house, so I spent at least 30 hours turning lights on and off, tidying up, hiding laundry, cleaning the kitchen again, and making the bed so that it looked pretty! Glad to be done with this phase!

And this morning Jim updated our whiteboard. 🙂 We have been praying for the family that God had selected to own our home. And now we have names for them (and I found him on LinkedIn!)

So there will be a new flurry of activity this month. Closing will be on October 31st or before. There will be closing related activities: appraisal, survey, inspection, and re-mediating issues found. Derek will come to Virginia to get our wine collection. We’ll be sending off three pods: to Mickey’s house in Ohio, to a storage unit in Florida, and Derek’s house in Florida. We’ll hold an estate sale for whatever is left. We’ll find temporary housing for Jim and move him in. And so much more…

Jim and I will then head to Italy for the first two weeks of November. Our intent is to rent an apartment in Lucca so that we can begin the application process for our permanent residence visa. It’s happening!