Photos of our place after a TON of decluttering and staging.

So here are the pics of our new place, near Como Lake.  Of course our furnishings aren’t anything like what’s pictured, but it should be fun to see what it will look like in a year once we’ve settled in. 

I’ll have to say that getting to this point has been one of the more trying exercises I can remember.  It started off with us stumbling upon the house at the end of a string of open houses and drive-bys.  We stopped in and just felt that it was “it.”  That evening we did some more research, discussed the pros/cons, and made the call to put an offer in a couple of days later.  Our mantra was “if it’s meant to be, we’ll get it…”

Our first offer was accepted subject to inspection, financing, and sale of our place.  We knew the first two wouldn’t be a problem, and with the track record of sales in our building, we felt our chances of a quick sale would be good.  The paperwork was signed, and then the real work started.

I won’t post any pics of our place before  we started decluttering, only because it would have been pic after pic of baby stuff.  It was clear we had to move stuff into storage, and so instead of renting a truck, filling it up, and driving stuff over to a storage facility, we went with a company called “Ah so easy…”  They drop a container off on the street, you fill it up over a day or two, then they come take it away and store it until you need them to drop it off at the new location. Thanks to GB for that tip! 

We packed that weekend like mad, and also did some repairs to finish off the stairs, and other maintenance work.  I’m so glad we had the extra help to declutter and move things out.  When the decluttering finished, my sister came out to help stage the place (pics in another post) and get things ready for the open house.  It was at that time that I came down with a nasty flu.  Sigh…

Mom and Vennie did a great job staging the place and so all we had to do was maintain things, get some sunny weather, and get a sale to complete the deal.

First open house we had 10 people cruise through (a few of them neighbours).  A couple of bites, but nothing.  Next open house (Father’s day), we had 1 person show up.  🙁

Here’s the interesting thing I did not know before.  Our offer on the house isn’t binding until we remove subjects.  Even though we have an accepted offer, another party with a stronger offer can come in and trump us.  If that were to happen, we have 48 hours to make a big decision.  Lock in or lose the house.  If we lock in without selling our place, we can be carrying 2 mortgages, and with #2 coming in September, not a great position to be in.

2 1/2 weeks in, finally an offer!  It is a reasonable offer, but subject to the sale of her condo.  This means that nothing is binding until she officially sells her place, and if the offer on her place is subject to sale of another place, then the chain continues until someone down the line comes up with a strong deal.  This chaining effect can go on for quite a few deals, just like a domino effect.  The day she comes in for a second viewing, we had our open parking area vandalized for copper pipes…  Obviously this has an effect on her, and on the day of her subject removal (July 4) she kills the deal without even reviewing the strata meeting minutes.  Back to square 1.

Another open house the following weekend and we get 6 visitors, and a couple more private viewings.  On July 8th, we get some news… someone else has a strong offer on the house, and we have 48 hours to decide what to do!  That same day, we also get another offer, no subject to sale.  That deal however, would not conclude until July 15th, and means that if we decide to lock in the house on July 10th, there is a risk that the buyer for our place could back out and leave us in a tight spot!  We talked about it at length, and decided that this is the house we want to raise our family in, and we’ll take the calculated risk.

 So we take the plunge and sign the paperwork.  All we need to do is wait for the buyer to complete inspection of the building and meeting minutes.  That Friday night, the buyer calls off the inspection.  :-0  Apparently there was some concern over the type of businesses that could go into our retail space.  That evening was spent talking to our strata council and pouring over the bylaws and amendments to find out what controls we had over the type of business could go in. 

When we bought, we never thought about this.  Most of the retail has been there for years, and they are pretty harmless- print shop, massage parlour (not the kind found on Kingsway), nail and hair place, cafe, etc.  In the end it took a call from the prospective buyer to one of the council members to calm things down, and the inspection was on again.  I can say there was a fair amount of drama over that incident!

Next up was the physical inspection, and we knew that would go well.  Just a few cracked tiles and a lock that needed adjustment was all that was reported back.  The last bit of drama that went on was the buyer’s realtor threatening the deal over the replacement of the tiles whereas we saw it as regular wear/tear.  Once we got over that bit of annoyance, the deal went through and everything was locked in.  Whew!  That was probably the most challenging 6 weeks to go through the ups and downs, plus the work to get our place ready to show.

I will say that in the future, it’s better to sell first, then go shopping for a place since coming into a deal with no subject to sell really enhances your position and makes thing a lot quicker.  Notch one on the belt of experience.

Our move date is August 30, which is less than 2 weeks before our official due date.  E had her ultrasound yesterday, and our baby is about 5lbs now and is quite a mover/shaker!

We’ll be really sad to leave our complex, and our friends.  When we were scrambling to get information we had to call upon our neighbors for help.  Even though they do not want to see us move, they did everything they could to help us sell, including digging up old documents and taking calls late in the evening.  That’s what kind of a community exists here, and one that we’re going to miss very much.  When we did finally sell, they were all congratulating us and ut was all bittersweet.  We’ve been there for 7 years.

 As our neighbour Patsy put it as she was explaining the situation to her 4 year old daugther, Ming- “we’re no longer neighbours, but we’re still friends!”

One of the first times that we let Erica go down the BIG corkscrew slide by herself… what could go wrong??