OUR HOUSE IS SOLD!

I realized today, as we set up a new computer for me, that I haven’t yet shared with you what has happened with our house, other than to mention in the last blog that it sold.

In the blog entitled, Our Crooked House, I explained that the reason I was sharing about the issues we had with the house was so that, when the Lord answered my specific prayers, you would be able to rejoice with me.  Well, get ready to rejoice!

We listed the house for sale on July 6 and had an open house for local realtors the next day, followed by an open house for buyers that weekend. The realtors’ open house was not encouraging.  Although we had a disclosure form revealing the settling, plus an engineer’s report saying that the foundation was solid, they were not optimistic that their clients would be interested. This was at least part of the reason why we had very little traffic at our first open house and few interested parties as the week went on. 

Since that was also just the week after the 4^th of July and a popular week for vacations, Jim and I didn’t get too concerned.  We thought it would pick up after a while.  It didn’t.  After about 3 weeks we came down in price, offered the house “as is”, and began to advertise to appeal to builders.  

If you read, Our Crooked House, then you will know how I had been praying since before we put the house on the market.  Expecting that it would be hard to sell the house I began praying specifically that we would sell it to a builder who would tear it down and build something new so that some other family might enjoy this town and neighborhood as much as we did, and not have a hard time selling it themselves later on down the line.

Early in August a potential buyer made a very low offer.  By that time Jim and I  suspected that we would have to come down substantially.  We determined that at our age, getting to Florida sooner rather than later mattered to us much more than the money, so Jim and I sat down and made a list of how much it would cost us to build a modest house in Florida and cover the expenses of the move, and determined a price we could live with.  After a little back and forth negotiating, we settled on a price, and sold our crooked house.

Want to know who bought it?  A builder.  He’s not going to tear it down to its foundation, but he is going to gut it, fix the issue that caused the house to settle in the first place, and make our 3 bedroom home a 4 bedroom home with 3 baths and a great room!  The people who buy it will get to enjoy our neighborhood AND, best of all, not have a single worry about settling when it comes time to sell it!  And Jim and I finally get to surge ahead with our move to Florida.  

As of today, we are almost ready to go.  Nearly all of our belongings are packed, furniture is given away, arrangements made for shipping the rest, and we are just counting the days till the September 10^th closing!  This week we put a deposit on a home in Florida so they can start building.

I’m so grateful to the Lord for undertaking for us in this house sale thing, answering my very specific prayers.  The process was distressing and disappointing at times - but not for long.  Through it all, the Lord taught us to just go with the flow, to access what we really NEEDED instead of what we wanted, and helped us to choose to value time over money.  

We are very excited about the adventure that lies ahead and can’t wait to see what the Lord has in store as we move to our new house, in a new town, in a new state.  God is faithful, as ever.