We Bought and Sold a House (and Everything Worked Out Just Fine)

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Hi, I'm Tina!

I’m the owner of Carrots ‘N’ Cake as well as a Certified Nutrition Coach and Functional Diagnostic Nutrition Practitioner (FDN-P). I use macros and functional nutrition to help women find balance within their diets while achieving their body composition goals.

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Hi, friends!

I just wanted to share the details of our recent home purchase and sale. It’s actually a fun story, so I thought you guys might enjoy it. Here goes!

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Back in March, Mal and I started talking about moving to a bigger house. Once Quinn (and all of his stuff) came along, our already tiny house felt even smaller. Plus, the loan interest rates were really low and we knew we wanted to move eventually, but the whole buying and selling process seemed so overwhelming. Honestly, I really didn’t want to do it, but then we received a realtor recommendation from a friend, and I changed my tune about the whole thing.

Our realtor, Melissa Garlisi, was incredible. Absolutely incredible. She made the entire process (both buying and selling) so easy. She was professional, knowledgeable, and straight-forward. She never left us in the dark about anything, and she was always more than willing to answer our questions. What we liked best about Melissa though was her attention to detail– of course, with regard to the nitty-gritty of buying and selling a home (we never had to worry about anything slipping through the cracks), but especially when it came to potential houses and things we may not have considered. A perfect example was when we *thought* we had found our dream house. We were thisclose to making an offer, but then Melissa pointed out the noise from the cars driving by on a nearby busy road. We were so excited about the house, we didn’t even realize it until she said something. The noise wasn’t super obvious, but it wasn’t something we wanted to listen to for the next 30+ years of our lives. Imagine enjoying a nice glass of wine while relaxing outside and listening to the whiz of cars passing by? No thanks.

Honestly, I could go on and on and on about how great Melissa was as a realtor. If you’re looking for a realtor in the area, I highly recommend her. Mal and I only have wonderful things to say about her.

The reason why I wanted to give you a little background on Melissa is because we were only causally thinking about moving. We visited a few open houses and talked about where we might want to live (i.e. not far from friends and our current life), but we weren’t 100% sure we wanted to move just yet.

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But then… we were putting our house on the market. Melissa made the process SO EASY and stress-free (I felt like Mal and I barely did anything), so that was that. It was time to sell our house.

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The housing market on the South Shore is insane. There’s very little inventory, so houses sell quickly and they’re often going for well above asking price. Of course, this is great when you’re selling a house…

Listen to how things went for us: We put our house on the market on a Tuesday evening. The next day, we had 21 showings. On Thursday morning, we accepted a offer. Boom. House sold. It happened so fast.

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Buying a new house was a lot more difficult and, whoa, stressful. Obviously, the market was competitive, but we really didn’t want to move twice. We considered living with my in-laws while we looked for a house, but the thought of putting everything into storage and living in limbo did not sound fun at all. Melissa assured us it was possible to sell and close on the same day, so that was the plan.

After we sold our house, we were on a mission to find a new home, but, at the same time, we didn’t want to rush into anything. We wanted to find our “forever home,” so we created a “must-have” check list to make sure we got exactly what we wanted:

  • 4+ bedrooms
  • 2+ bathrooms
  • garage
  • fireplace
  • “near stuff” <— I wanted to be 5 minutes or less from a grocery store/shopping
  • not on a main road/in a neighborhood
  • porch/deck
  • yard
  • move-in ready
  • no pool

After that, it was go time and we actively started to look at houses. And, boy, did we look at houses. (If I had to guess, we probably saw close to 20 by the time we made an offer on our current home.) We knew the market was competitive, so whenever we saw a house that piqued our interest, we were all over it. Melissa was on top of our requests, so we typically saw a house within 48 hours or less. (The picture below was taken after a long day of house-hunting.)

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In the middle of house hunting, I flew to Colorado for BLEND. A few new houses came on the market while I was away, and they looked really promising. I knew they wouldn’t last long, so Mal offered to look at them without me. He ended up falling in love with our new house and immediately called me. He told me it was exactly what we were looking for and more (i.e. master bedroom walk-in closet = my dream). He even said he could imagine Christmas mornings in the den.

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I could tell Mal wanted this house really bad, so when he suggested that we make an offer, I agreed. I hadn’t seen the house in person (just photos from the listing online, which Mal assured me didn’t do it justice), but I trusted him and knew he wouldn’t make a bad decision, especially an important one like buying our forever home. With the market being crazy-competitive, we knew we needed to act quickly and aggressively, so we made an offer that same afternoon and the sellers immediately accepted. Whoa. We bought a house. That I hadn’t seen. 

I took a red-eye home from BLEND that next morning. As soon as Mal picked me up from the airport, we drove to see our new house… well, the outside of it. The sellers still lived there, so we couldn’t just walk in without a showing. On Sunday though we scheduled a showing, and I was finally able to tour the inside. It was love at first sight. Nice work, Mal!

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We ended up coordinating a closing date that worked with both the buyers and sellers, but it wasn’t for 60+ days, so we just hung out and waited patiently to move into our new house. The time seemed to take forever to pass, but moving day finally arrived!

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If you missed my previous post about our move, you can see scenes from it here.

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We are truly over the moon about our new house. The previous owners took such great care of it over the years. They were its only owners (they lived here for 32 years), so they made a number of wonderful updates that we so, so, so appreciate, especially them painting every room before they decided to put it on the market. Remember how Mal and I painted every single room in our old house? I’m so glad we don’t have to do that again! We have a few small projects that we’ll likely tackle over the next year or two (i.e. updating the downstairs bathroom and repaving the driveway), but nothing that needs immediate attention. Honestly, the house is immaculate. You can tell how much the previous owners loved this house. I have a good feeling we will too!

Our house is still in shambles after the move, but I’ll be sure to share some photos once we get a little more settled and buy like a million things for it. The decorating is the best part, right??

Related: Remember when a psychic said we’d move to a new house in less than a year? I still remember her saying that to me, and I *knew* she was a 100% wrong with her prediction. In my head, there was no way in hell I was moving. I wanted a low-key summer. Ha!

Questions of the Day

Would you let your significant other purchase a home without you seeing it in person first?

What’s on your must-have list for your dream house? 

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