So after the open house, we went home to talk. We left the older area with the big shady trees and the big yards and went back to our subdivision with the houses squeezed as close together as possible and the little 5 year old trees. What should we do? We gave it a few days, as we had to get back to our daily lives, but we weren’t prepared for what happened next…

Where is the listing?

The next weekend, we thought we would look at the pictures of the house again. We went on MLS and to our shock, the listing was gone! We also weren’t prepared for our reaction either. We were SAD! We realized then how much we did want the house! The way the kids were having fun in the backyard, that HUGE back yard. All of the possibilities with the house. Our current house was nice, but there wasn’t much left to put our stamp on it, but this house had so many possibilities! New kitchen… new bathrooms… flooring… walls… All of those years of watching house flipping shows, this was our chance! But now it was gone.

One last drive by the house

Now that we had decided that we didn’t like our current house, and wanted a smaller house with a bigger yard, and now that our dream house was gone, we thought we would drive around and see what else was out there. We went back to the older part of the city and drove down a few other streets. They were nice but not quite the same. We came to the nice street with the old trees again. Let’s put ourselves through some more misery and drive past it one more time. As we get close, we see a sign on the front lawn. It is a For Sale By Owner sign with an Open House sign below! We couldn’t believe our eyes!

Perfect Timing

We quickly parked and went inside. It turned out, the house belonged to the parents of a lady who live 2 houses down the street. It was the house she grew up in. She showed us around the house and told us about all of the fun she used to have in the yard. Our kids were running around having fun in the back yard now. She explained that the contract with the real estate agent had expired and she was switching to a new one. That was why the listing was removed from MLS. We told her how much we loved the house and how we wanted to have memories with our kids like the ones she had. She gave us the card for the new agent she was working with, we took one last look around the house and headed home, feeling much more hopeful about the situation.

Let’s do it!

We got home, feeling full of all sorts of emotions. When it was just my wife and I, moving was easy. We moved every year for 9 years in a row at one point. Now we had kids, who had friends that they would be moving away from. Our youngest was in JK, so there weren’t that many best friends to be losing, but our oldest had been with the same friends for 3 years. This was going to be a little more difficult. We talked about the plans we had for the house. Lots of room to play in the yard… maybe a pool in the future… Thankfully we have amazing kids, and they quickly were on board for this adventure. We called the agent and set up a meeting.

Lots of work to do!

The agent came over and we started to make the list of everything to be done to put our house on the market. I won’t go into the details here, that will be the topic for another post. But to finish off this story, I will say it took longer than expected. We had one thing in our favour however. The owner of our new dream house really liked us. She liked our young family, and wanted us to get the house. She was in no rush to sell the house, so she gave us all the time we needed. She even turned away other offers that came in, as she said we could have all the time we needed. Finally, after what seemed like forever, our house sold, and we were able to complete the purchase of our new little house.

Just the beginning of our story…

As I said, the story of the sale of our house will be getting its own post, as will many other events from over the years. I will also be posting about many of the renovations that I have done. These may not be in chronological order, as I may relate them to time of year instead. These will include helpful hints, recommendations for tools, things I would do differently in retrospect, and hopefully help you all with your own dream homes, whatever size they may be. If you want, you can leave me your email address and I can notify you whenever the next post are done. Thanks for listening!