Trying to help my mom with various aspects of selling her house, I have come to find out that the process is way more difficult than it used to be.

Ignorant Bliss

I bought my current house over 30 years ago…other than the last-minute requests for additional documentation to approve my mortgage, there was very little angst about the whole process.  We made an offer, had an appraisal and inspection done, signed a thousand papers and moved into our new house.

Fast-forward to now…my mom who lives down the road from me is selling her house and moving to live with my sister.  She bought the house about 10 years ago…new construction.  She and her husband kept her house pristine over the decade they lived there.  For example, not once did her husband finish his shower without taking a squeegee to the glass door and tile walls of the shower stall.  And you could practically eat off of their garage floor.

We were thrilled for my mom when we heard that someone had bought her house with the one contingency that an inspection be completed (at buyer’s expense).

For $650, the buyer got a 70 page inspection report detailing a myriad of problems with my mom’s house…all of which needed to be fixed before the purchase contract was satisfied.  A supplemental stucco/stone inspection was also paid for by the buyer for an additional 30 pages of reported issues.

Suffice it to say, my mom is having all the issues corrected…thankfully, most of them were easily corrected by her regular handyman.  But it took my mom, my sister and me hours to sift through the two reports, determine which items were valid or not and determine how to go about getting them corrected.  Thank goodness my sister had recently gone through a similar process in selling her home and she is incredibly organized and efficient at it.

So…compare selling a 10 year old house with a 34 year old house…I have decided I will  never sell my place…ever.  If I decide to move, I will just buy a new place and let my heirs sell it when I’m dead.

Current Knitting

The latest Knitted Cross Stitch Scarf is completed.

This is unfortunately a colorway of yarn with lots of reds that makes it impossible for my camera to capture a good photo of it.  You’ll have to come see it in person at one of my two craft shows later this year!

I also started a simple garter-on-the-bias scarf which hopefully will be colorful enough to make it interesting, but not too colorful to dissuade someone from buying it for a man.

I’ve found that it’s hard to go wrong with black garments when selling at a craft show.