House For Sale Part IV

So, we put our house on the market. Knowing a house will sell better if it's well decorated, clean and friendly, we bought a few decorations, took down some of the less inviting ones, like my African masks and big screen TV, and Cleaned Everything. Lindsay's parents, Rich and Sue were an especially great help here, coming over on the weekends to help paint the porch, weed the yard and clean in the house. When we were finally finished, and Jared was meeting with us to take the photos, all we had left was keeping it clean. We had a plan. We were going to move ourselves, the cats and dogs to Linz's parent's basement, where they had a basement apartment that they had reclaimed for their own. We thought this would be perfect, the potential buyers could see our house at any time, without having to worry about us or the pets, and the house would stay clean and tidy.

This plan didn't really work out. Since taking back over the basement, her parents had re-decorated, and added some new furniture and a nice flat screen, turning it into a sanctuary of sorts, and though they made every effort to make it work, it was pretty clear from the first night that the plan would not work. Between our odd hours we keep and our quiet, but big and clumsy dogs, it was a problem waiting to happen. So, a day or two later, we headed back home, devising an elaborate system for dealing with kenneling the dogs and cats while we were gone based around whether people might come by.

We really didn't need to bother. From when our house was listed, on October 16th, to when we finally gave up on January 27th, we had 3 viewings. Our timing was utterly horrid, placing it on the market just a few days before the Real Estate market took a dramatic turn for the even worse. That said, it was still a valuable experience, both the prepping and the sellling process, and we think things will go a lot smoother the next time.


In the meantime, we continued looking into B&B prospects in the Pocatello area...