House Stuff

One of the big things that has happened this year is that we've decided to move. I've blogged about wanting to move before. We've gone back and forth on this for a long time. Looking at houses the time we ended up here, we looked both here in Gresham and in SE Portland, but there were a variety of reasons for ending up here - mostly Anthony's needs in regards to size and having a garage. I didn't hugely object, so here we are.

And, really, it's been fine living here. We like our house quite well. Our neighborhood is nice. There is a park just a couple blocks away. Davan's best friend when she was 4-9ish lives about a quarter mile from here. We can walk into downtown Gresham, which I do frequently, to visit the library. We live in a good place to start long out of city bike rides. We had a great homeschool Girl Scout troop which met just a couple miles from our house for many years and provided us with good friends.

However, there are the down sides, too. Anthony's commute takes him 1 - 1.5 hours each way by bike, bus or MAX (our light rail). I hate yard work and no one else is willing to step up to it, either. The house is larger than our current needs. Most of Davan's interests take us into SE Portland, which means a lot of driving. I really like urban living. I'd love to live closer to downtown. I want to be able to ride/walk most anywhere we want to go. It's really windy here a lot and that actually goes away just 10 miles to the west of us - our target area.

All-in-all, we decided we were ready to move - to heck with the cost and inconvenience of moving. Of course, just now is a bad time to be selling a house. We put the house on the market in October, having invested several months in sprucing it up. We started with too high an asking price - $198,000.

Just after we put the house up, a house nearby, not nearly as nice as ours, went for $168,000 and we were shocked by house cheap it was. It should have been a sign to drop our price significantly. We did drop, but not that much.

Shortly there after, about a dozen houses in our immediate neighborhood went up for sale. Mostly foreclosures. Prices dropped. We've been steadily dropping.

We're now down to $165,000. If we'd started out at $175,000, we have no doubt the house would have sold. It's a bummer, to be sure, but we are so ready to move that we've just bitten the bullet and we're doing it.

The light at the end of the tunnel is this. We dropped the price to $165,000 just on Wednesday evening. Thursday, we got a call from a realitor wanting to show the place that evening. It was a last minute thing for me, not having gotten the call when it first came and ending up with a 25 minute window in which to make the house presentable and put away the groceries I'd been out buying when I finally noticed the message waiting.

The realitor called right after showing the house, wanting to set up another time to see it the next day (today). She said, "The wife is ready to go, but wants the husband to see it to make sure. He got called away at the last minute today."

So, this evening, while we're off taking Davan to her dress rehearsal for 100 Echos, the couple will be looking at our house. We're trying to not get too worked up - who knows if the husband will like it? Who knows if they'll make a reasonable (to us that means full price right now) offer? However, we are really hoping this will be it. Really hoping.