Lorem Ipsum

As y'all may recall, after a lot of fuss and delay around recarpeting, repainting, and staging my condo, I (or rather, my agent) finally put it on the market on Tuesday, July 6.

(Backstory for those who missed it: A year ago, I bought a house and moved out of my condo. But my lender for the house wouldn't let me sell the condo immediately (because they had no reason to believe it would sell quickly); they wouldn't give me a loan unless/until I had a tenant for the condo, with a one-year signed lease. So I rented it out for a year, which cost me a fair bit of money 'cause the rent was lower than the expenses. At the end of the year, the tenants moved out and I started the process of selling the condo.)

An offer came in the following Monday, July 12. It was less than my asking price, but it was within the range that I had previously decided would be acceptable.

And, it turned out, it was from a co-worker, though not one who I knew.

I was glad about that, because the condo is approximately as close as it's possible to live to the office, so I was kind of hoping a co-worker would be interested; also because I figured, given the general level of niceness and reasonableness I see at work, that a co-worker was somewhat less likely than a member of the general public to be obnoxious or back out or otherwise behave badly.

And there were other unrelated details that made me suspect the deal might go more smoothly than some others might.

So I immediately accepted the offer.

Things went well for a week or two. Then the buyer's inspection report arrived.

It turned out the buyer's inspector was way more thorough than my inspector. I was impressed; I'm tempted to have that inspector come look at my current house so I can get anything fixed that needs fixing.

But the result was that the buyer wanted me to pay for various repairs. (And extensive investigations into potential problem areas.)

They were mostly reasonable repairs to want. But I confess I was a little unhappy that after making what I saw as a relatively low offer, they were asking me to also cover the cost of the repairs.

But my handyman looked at the items and said they wouldn't take long to fix. So I figured we were all set.

And then the buyer's agent pointed out that the agreement I had signed about getting those items fixed said that all work would be done by a licensed contractor.

I kind of threw a temper tantrum (in private; I didn't say this stuff to the buyer). Pretty much every contractor I've ever heard of disappears at some point in the middle of a job (especially a small job); jobs end up taking two to four times as long as estimated, and costing two to four times as much. I was already annoyed at having to pay for these repairs, and if I had noticed the licensed-contractor clause, I would have done my best to get it changed or removed; my handyman does great work, and if I had noticed these repair issues before putting the condo on the market, I would've asked him to fix them, and the buyer would never have known they weren't done by a licensed contractor. (After all, the same handyman has done all sorts of other repairs at the condo over the past couple years; if the buyer doesn't trust the handyman's work, then they'll have to get a lot of stuff re-done.)

But while I was busy feeling put-upon and surly, my agent (who pointed out to me that it was worth paying a couple thousand dollars to complete the sale) went and met with the contractor and got things moving, and it turned out the contractor was very efficient and more or less reasonably priced (and, when I ran into him a week later at the condo, a nice guy), and so despite a couple of minor unforeseen complications, he got the work done pretty efficiently (and didn't disappear in the middle).

Meanwhile, I signed the relevant papers to complete the sale. And I got the rest of my stuff out of the condo garage. And then a couple days ago the stager removed all the staging furniture. (I had wanted to leave it in place as long as possible just in case the deal fell through.)

And yesterday, escrow closed.

So the condo no longer belongs to me; I'm back to owning only one residence.

Yay!

I'm very happy about this; a big relief to be done with all of that.

Also, if I'm understanding the tax rules correctly, I don't have to pay taxes on the money I'm getting, because the difference between the price I paid and the selling price (plus and minus a few other relevant numbers) is below the threshold amount. I'll consult with a professional to make sure, but I read through the relevant regulations and it looks promising.

So now I can finally do things like buy some nicer furniture for my house, and maybe even do some renovations.

Also, I can now afford to take a leave of absence from work, which I'll be doing starting in a couple weeks, but more about that in a future entry.

For now, just glad that the condo sale has completed.