De-cluttering or Packing?

I thought the idea behind de-cluttering was two-fold - to remove your personal items - so the prospective buyer can more easily envision the property as his or her house rather than yours and to remove extra things that might make the property appear smaller than it is.

I didn't think it would take long to de-clutter. Mark started packing up the items I was removing from tabletops and walls. Then he kept going. Before I knew it, the entire kitchen was packed up except for pots, pans and cutting boards. (It actually wasn't before I knew it - it was a grueling three days. I just hadn't expected to do that right away - because I thought we were de-cluttering, not packing.)

I kept trying to hold Mark back. He wanted to pack everything. He would have packed up everything and left the stager nothing to work with.  As it turned out, that's pretty much what she wanted. Nothing. The only things that are to remain on my kitchen counters when they get ready to take the pictures is a cookbook holder and a kitchen scale. Everything else is to be tucked out of sight - including salt and pepper shakers, knives, and the canisters with sugar and flour. Seems pretty  extreme to me but I'll go along. The china cabinet is empty. The curio cabinet is empty. I'm not sure how empty display cabinets help sell a house. It just makes it look like we've already moved, except that we haven't. I know the stager would prefer that I remove the curio cabinet altogether. But it has beveled glass sides and I'm not even going to attempt it. I'm leaving that for the pros. It can be pushed out of the way for pictures.

But here's the reservation I have based on the houses we looked at when we were in Florida. There were two that had the same floor plan. One was vacant and people were living in the other one. (People who had lots and lots of furniture and pictures of grandkids!)  We viewed the vacant one first and I remarked that I didn't think my furniture would fit in the master bedroom. It just didn't look big enough to me. When we got to the second house, identical floor plan, but showing with furniture, I realized that my furniture would fit because they had the same number of pieces that were similarly sized. The point is that stripping out all or even half the furniture doesn't always work. I may be the odd one here, but I find houses with furnishings much more appealing than empty rooms.

I'm looking at my house now, becoming more minimalist by the hour, and thinking that I don't really want to live here anymore. (Seriously, even the teapot has to be hidden. - As well as the bathroom rugs and towels.) Maybe I did have too much stuff - I'm planning to display fewer items when we move but perhaps rotate them on a seasonal basis. But without my "stuff" it's just not seeming like home anymore.

Ready to be gone.

Classifying Clutter

I've always felt that I have an aversion to clutter. When I was little, my mother had a very high tolerance for clutter. She never made us pick up our toys. They were always strewn around the living room unless she picked them up. When it was my time to be mom - I wouldn't tolerate that. My child was limited to three toys in the main living area at any given time. He could trash his room with his toys if he wanted to, but that door could be closed so I didn't have to see it.

I can't stand having newspapers or magazines scattered all over the place. I can't stand to have mail (especially old mail that nobody bothered to deal with) piled up. (My desk is a different story and anyone who's ever worked with me knows that my desk is not necessarily tidy. But I can find anything on it!) I keep a folder with coupons in it and from time to time I go through it to throw away those coupons that have expired without being used.

I used to have a shelf in the kitchen that was a catch-all. When I redesigned and remodeled the kitchen some years ago, that shelf got eliminated. It was my goal to just have a junk drawer and call it done. That hasn't worked as well as I would've liked and every now and again I have to mount a campaign to "reclaim" the table - or the baker's rack, or whatever place the clutter is taking over.

But since getting ready to sell the house I've come to understand that there's more to clutter than a pile of "stuff" on a tabletop or countertop. Some people also consider "collectibles" clutter. I know!! Who would have thought that having 15 or more fish plates hanging on one's wall would be considered clutter? Why would anyone assume that Fenton glass, or carnival glass, or pink depression glass, or Mexican pottery is clutter? Or hand blown glass fish?

Let's just use the fish plates as an example. I bought the first one years ago in Brittany - by chance. I stopped at a roadside shop and there it was!  Then we started looking for others. We found one in Arkansas after Mark caught a fish with his bare hands - it's a great memory, and I think of it every time I see that plate. We bought one fish plate on the way to Chichen Itza - haggled over the price (as you do). Another one, Delft blue, we bought in Amsterdam. Two were purchased in Spoleto, Italy. I remember seeing one of them in a shop window and revisiting the shop almost daily until we found a time it was actually open so we could buy it. We bought one in Hawaii on our 10th anniversary. Some were purchased in San Antonio and even Sherman, Texas. Each one represents a memory - even the ones that were gifts remind us of the givers. Will they all be on a wall when we get to Florida? - probably not. But it worked here in this house.

I know that when we went to visit Agatha Christie's house in Devon a few years ago, there were so many "collections". If she didn't have a big house and wasn't famous, she'd have been considered a hoarder. I don't think I've crossed that line - but I will say that I enjoy being surrounded by "things" that evoke pleasant memories.

You can call it clutter if you want to.

Choosing an Agent - Part 2

When we left off, I had two suggested listing prices - $290K and $190K. Obviously, I want the $290K. What I don't want is to have the agent list it at $290K and then immediately start to lower my expectations. I know it happens.

Yes, we are selling for health reasons, but I don't want to have a fire sale. We don't actually NEED to be out of here until November when it starts getting cold again. But on the other hand, now that the decision has been made, there's no need to hang around. I want to get it done.

We'd planned to spend the rest of our lives here and we'd made improvements accordingly. New windows, new doors, new gutters, a 12 x 16 barn - they make the house look nicer but we probably wouldn't have done any of those things if we'd known we were going to move. But it's okay, those things should help us get a good price.

Another avenue we looked at was the online "we'll make this easy for you" people, like Open Door. I filled out their online inquiry form and found out that they do not operate in my city. Then I saw an add for Knock. Apparently they have several different programs but nobody took the time to explain the different options to me. They just sent someone out to my house. I showed her around, she took pictures and the next day a guy phoned me to tell me I needed to remove all the wallpaper in my house and paint the walls magnolia, and that if I did all that, I might be able to get close to $200K. He explained to me that it was all based on some very "sophisticated" algorithms. But it's just more work than I want to do and like the Ebby agent's "scientific" analysis - there are just too many things it didn't take into account.

I mentioned my dilemma to my CPA who gave me her son-in-law's business card. I called him and he came out with another member of his team. He'd already looked the house up in the tax records, and on Zillow. He had comps - much the same as the other two agents who'd turned up. But more than that - he was excited about the possibilities! He was even more excited when he saw the back yard, the storm shelter and the barn. He was pleased that the house has a good sized laundry room, especially when so many houses don't have anything more than a closet for the washer and dryer.

He told me about his database of investors/buyers both in and out of state. He told me about different marketing avenues and ideas for generating interest in the property. He showed me a sample of the 3-D virtual tour that he uses. He uses a professional stager and a professional photographer. It comes out of his earnings on the sale, not mine.

I didn't have to ask him why I should list with him. He told me without me having to ask.

We haven't set a price yet, which is okay because it isn't going on the market officially until we leave for England. And he's arranged a meeting with someone from the city next week to talk about developments in town which might have a positive impact on the pricing of my house. I'm impressed.

I think we chose wisely.

Choosing an Agent - Part 1

Many people try to sell their homes themselves. Some people do okay with that - most of us need a professional. We knew we would. Even though I once held a real estate license in Ohio and in Texas, I'm no longer familiar with the market and I haven't kept up with changes to contracts. I want someone who's familiar with the market, knows what's going on in the community, is capable of marketing and can manage the property showings in my absence. Someone who will help me get the best price for my property and navigate through all the paperwork that's involved.

Most people list their property with the first agent they call. Not me. I want to meet them. I want to hear what they have to say about my property. Do they think it will sell quickly or do they think it will be a challenge. Most of all, I want to know why I should hire him or her instead of one of their competitors.

You'd think it would be easy for us since we are in the home inspection business and have plenty of experience with agents. I've recommended a number of them to friends over the years. But we were reluctant to call one of them because choosing one over the other might set off a firestorm that could end up damaging our business.

There are also some agencies that I just don't like. Coldwell Banker is one. I don't have to worry about losing business from them by saying that because unless you sign up for their vendor program, you're not getting any of their business anyway. And I won't pay to play.

ReMax and Keller Williams have some excellent agents - all the ones we've worked with have been great. But KW also have a lot of part timers. I know many people hire their friend who's a part time agent to list their house. Personally, I don't think it's a good idea. I prefer a full-time professional. (Do you want to hire a CPA who only works evenings and weekends?)

I like Ebby Halliday. All their agents are full time. And I have NEVER been asked by one of their brokers or agents to sponsor an event or join a vendor program. Although I used to hate to meet them at networking events because I always felt like they were going to take my arm off. As a group  they were what I call snooty. Perhaps I found them intimidating because I'm a tad introverted.

Anyway, I digress (this is not the Inspector's Wife blog). The first agent I talked to was recommended by someone who'd done some work on our house. I met with her and she was very nice. The meeting was fairly casual, although she had brought some comps with her. After seeing the property, she gave me an opinion on price, based on her knowledge of the local market and her 20+ years of experience. I liked her a lot. She shared a few tips for de-cluttering and gave me some insight into how she intended to market my home. I wasn't particularly happy that she was with Coldwell Banker and she did make a pitch to sell me some homeowner warranty insurance that is "totally optional". But for now, she was in the lead.

We also considered some of the reduced commission agencies like Redfin. Seriously, why would you pay someone 6% of the sales price if all they're going to do is list it with the Multiple Listing Service? I filled out the online form and Redfin emailed me back that they didn't have any agents in my area, which I found odd because we've done inspections where the buyer's agent was with Redfin. I guess the bottom line was that they didn't have any agents that would list it for 1% - all of them would be charging 3%. That's the same price as a full service agent but without full service. Redfin was off the list.

I was still toying with the idea of calling some agents that we'd worked with in the past. But instead I filled out an online form to be connected with "top" agents in my area. (I suspect that "my area" was loosely defined by the website.)

That website emailed me contact information for three agents. The first one was a Coldwell Banker agent.  I already had one of those, no need to call another.

The second on the list was from an agency I'd never heard of. I called and talked with the agent's assistant. I explained my timeline - we need to de-clutter, take our personal pictures down, repair a couple of cracks and then repaint a wall or two, and have the house ready to go on the market by the time we leave for England at the end of April. And she said, "It sounds like you have a lot of deferred maintenance. Why don't you give us a call back when you're finished with those repairs?"

"Deferred maintenance?" Indeed. Perhaps she doesn't understand what deferred maintenance is. I do. It's when homeowners fail to perform routine maintenance on their property and it falls into a state of disrepair. Not what's going on here. If I didn't take my personal pictures off the wall (along with the nails and hangers that were holding them up, the wall would not need to be painted. In my thinking, a cosmetic touch up is not the same as deferred maintenance. It's like the difference between putting on makeup and getting a facelift. She's off the list.

Next up was an Ebby agent. I'd seen her signs around town. We met and talked about my timeline and  I showed her around and then she showed me her listing presentation that was pretty much focused on the million dollar properties that she'd listed and sold and the awards she'd won. That's nice and all, but I know my house isn't going to sell for a million dollars, so I'm wondering how much attention my listing will get when she's got those million dollar places consuming most of her time and resources. Bottom line - she came across as snooty. But to her credit she refrained from putting a price on the house until she'd done her homework. I got it in an email just as we were leaving on vacation. She thought it would sell for $100,000 less than the Coldwell Banker agent did. That's not a big difference on a million dollar property - what's $100,000 when you're talking about a million? But we were talking about the difference between $200K and $300K. I eventually got around to looking at her "scientific" calculation. It was formatted much like an appraisal. But it's scope was very limited. The things you got plus or minus for were age, square footage, bedrooms and garage. Although she did give some high points for one house that had been flipped and was completely sleek and modern on the inside despite it's old-fashioned farmhouse exterior. That seems psychotic to me, but in her estimation it made my traditional-style home worth less. Of the homes in my area, even the one that had no garage, no laundry room, a smaller lot, and only two bedrooms sold for more than she wanted me to list mine for. I got no points for updated plumbing and electrical. No points for radiant barrier. No points for HVAC units that are less than 5 years old. No points for the 12 x 16 barn. No points for the hot tub. No points for the less than one year old energy efficient windows. My best guess is that she didn't want to mess around with it so she priced it to where it would sell within an hour and she wouldn't have to waste any of her marketing money trying to sell it at a fair price. She's off the list.

But with the big gap in suggested pricing, I knew I needed to speak with a few more agents.

To be continued...

Those Annoying Food Bloggers

I like to cook and I like to try new recipes. Pinterest is a great source of new recipes and just about everything we've tried has been delicious. But it's not without issues.

The primary issue is "the food blogger". I feel like Joe Friday on the old Dragnet series - "just the facts ma'am". I want the recipe. I don't care how much your husband loves this recipe. I don't care that your children who are usually such picky eaters just love this recipe. I don't care what the weather was the day you made it. I don't need to know every thought that entered your head the day you made this recipe. And I don't want to subscribe to your blog so I "never miss a recipe". I only want "this" recipe. (Although if you have suggestions for accompaniments - in the case of entrees - I'm all ears.)

And to make matters worse, the really popular food bloggers have so many ads popping up on their page that it's difficult to scroll through to the recipe. If the recipes were always at the end, you could just fast track to the end, but the recipe can be anywhere within the blog. I think they mix it up just to keep you on the page. But it's hard to scroll when you have ads popping up in the sidebars, at the bottom and in the middle - many of them videos. I assume these food bloggers are making a living from blogging. (Good for them, I am not even making pin money - you will note the absence of ads on my blog. And I'm okay with that.)

Then you see a Print Recipe button. You think you have found it at last. But when you click on it, you don't actually get the recipe, you get something that's trying to replace your search bar. It is NOT a shortcut to the recipe. It is a shortcut to disaster. (And I thought Bing was bad!)

I am starting to think that finding new recipes in magazines is probably a better option for me than wading through all that babble online.

The Tyranny of Technology - Part 2

The great thing about technology WAS that you could do the work you needed to do from anywhere in the world. If you had access to the Internet and a password, you were good to go. Not anymore. In addition to having the password, the system you want to access needs to recognize not only you, but the device you're using.

When we're away, whether it's business or vacation, I still have to complete the payroll. And that can be a challenge. I often get a message that indicates that the system does not recognize my device. Sometimes it's because I'm using Mark's computer and recently it was because I got a new computer. Other times, I have no idea why I got that message - the computer had been used numerous times in the past. Regardless, they always want to send a code to my phone, (which may or may not work depending on where I am). But without being able to enter that code, I'm not getting in, even though I have the correct password. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for fraud prevention, but sometimes it just seems too much. And it makes a relatively quick and easy job long and hard. Not to mention the added stress I feel when I think of the consequences of not getting that payroll info entered in time.

My last computer had a touch screen. So when I couldn't get the scroll bars to work, I could always just move the page with my finger. Not so this new one. I've finally figured out that when the scroll bars don't work, I can use the up and down arrows to get to what I want to see. But the other awful thing about this one is that the page up key is where the shift key used to be on my old computer. So as I'm typing away, every time I want to type a capital letter, I end up typing a lower case letter, but on the row above where I intended. Going to take some getting used to. But the other thing this new computer has, (I'm sure it's a feature rather than a bug) is a rogue cursor. Every now and then it just goes somewhere on the screen that you wouldn't expect it to be. And it proves difficult to track it down and get hold of it. While it's gone rogue it likes to open other windows and change the size of the print on the screen. Plus the Save and Next buttons can be activated just by hovering - no need to click. That's really not a time saver. Sometimes I like to review what's on the screen before I save it. A click is a deliberate action. Hovering is not - particularly when your cursor just takes off on it's own.

I know, first world problems.....

The Tyranny of Technology - Part 1

Mark is ready to give up on technology. Some days he blames Apple and other days he blames Google. They have taken over his life. One or the other of them seems to want him to change his password every other day. And because he's allowed these giant, faceless, impersonal, corporations to take control of managing his passwords, he's been locked out of every account he has. (I keep mine written down in a book, so I don't have this problem.)

It did motivate him to get the company email working again. (We'd lost control of that a couple of years ago when we were hacked.) But he can no longer use his gmail account that he's had for years. Not sure what else he's lost access to. I only know that this man who rarely raises his voice or loses his temper has been slamming things, shouting, and just downright cranky. (You can fix most things with a hug - but the fix is only temporary.)

Part of this disaster is access to his Amazon account. Not all bad, as he won't be spending any money with them, but it's also difficult for me to figure out what he bought and whether it was for us or for the business. (Amazon was so good at keeping track of those things for you. I loved how easy it was to look up previous orders.)

But the bad news is that we bought a security camera, (after that $1700 water bill - we wanted to see who was coming into our back yard while we were away) but he couldn't get it to connect to the internet like it was supposed to. We were going to return it. Returning anything from Amazon requires you to log in to your account to set up the return. He couldn't do that because all of his passwords had been deleted.

So he called Amazon to try to regain access to his account. He was on speaker phone so I heard the whole exchange. He explained the problem. He needed to return an item but he'd lost access to his account. A pompous-sounding young lady (I assume young and I believe her British accent to be affected rather than genuine) told him that she would ask him three questions and that he must answer all three correctly or the conversation would be ended and he would not be granted access to his account.

Two of the questions were reasonable. They were about places he'd lived or cars he'd owned. I don't exactly remember that third question but it amounted to "what color shirt where you wearing on the last Monday when there was a full moon?" And just like that, the conversation was over. He still couldn't access the account, and we couldn't return the camera. No instructions on what to do next. Nothing. I couldn't believe it. We tried to ask what to do next but Daphne or Hillary or whatever Miss Uppity's name only stated that the conversation had ended and hung up.

I explained the problem to the credit card company. They issued a credit, but of course when Amazon responded that the item had been delivered and not returned, they reinstated the charge.

I hope that when we move we'll be able to get that security camera to work. And meanwhile, if that is Amazon's version of helping a customer - we probably don't need to shop there anymore, anyway. In the meantime, I need to figure out how to cancel that Amazon account.

Getting Ready for a New Adventure

I don't know why we didn't think of it sooner. Probably because I've lived in Texas longer than I've lived anywhere. And we thought that if we went further south that it would be warm enough. And it seemed right to give that a try.

We were in New Braunfels and San Antonio for most of January and February. At best, it was only five degrees warmer than it was in Dallas. Which was still way below 50 F. So from November through March it was too cold for Mark to live in Dallas or San Antonio. (I checked the weather for South Padre and it wasn't a whole lot better.) And then when you get to late June through early September, it's too hot to live in Dallas and we have to head for Colorado or Wyoming - which means that the only months we can actually live here are April, May, and October.

And then it hit us. Move someplace where it's warm all the time! That would be Hawaii, Arizona, Florida or Mexico if we want to remain in North America. (There are even fewer options in Europe.) I'm not ready to move to Mexico. My Spanish is non-existent once you get past uno mas and gracias. Hawaii is nice, but it's just too far away from everything else and the cost of living is beyond ridiculous. It snowed in Tucson and Phoenix last year making Arizona a less attractive choice. Plus direct flights to England aren't readily available out of Phoenix not to mention that in summer it gets even hotter than Dallas, although it is a shorter drive to Colorado. Then there's Florida. If you get as far south as central Florida, the temperatures are always warm. The humidity can be a bit overbearing, but there's air conditioning and you're only an hour or so from the beach and the sea breezes. We'd also be close to the international airport in Orlando. Maybe even closer than we are to DFW Airport. Plus there's a cruise port at Canaveral, a little more than an hour away. And for extensive cruise choices there's Fort Lauderdale and Miami - a four to five hour drive. (No farther than driving to Galveston, but with more itinerary options.) And some of those over 55 communities look really good. Golf courses, community centers, neighborhood pools, clubs, activities - be as busy or as idle as you choose.

So that's our plan. Florida. We're getting ready. Stay tuned.

Vicksburg

I'd been wanting to stop by Vicksburg to visit the Civil War Battlefield for quite some time. I remember visiting Gettysburg in high school and I assumed Vicksburg would be similar and I knew that Mark would enjoy it.

The Visitor Center was very similar to Gettysburg, but that's where the similarity ended for me. Possibly because when I visited Gettysburg it was with a group of high school kids and they didn't drive us through the entire park. But at Vicksburg, Mark and I drove the entire park.

It wasn't really what I expected. There were numerous markers in red and blue to designate where the lines were and where things happened. Apparently it was mapped out by survivors not long after the war ended and is considered very accurate as to what happened and where.

Like Gettysburg, there were cannons that were in place. What I don't remember seeing in Gettysburg were all the state monuments. (I don't know whether they have them or not. If they do, I didn't see them.) States who had regiments or divisions fighting in a particular area had erected monuments with their state name. Some were all the same. For example, Iowa had the same smallish monument erected in numerous places. (After you'd seen a few of them, you  could spot them in other places.) Other states, like Ohio, had monuments that were not identical but were similar in size and style.

What's striking is how many monuments there are.

And some states, like Alabama, only had one but it was impressive.

Of course, Texas made an impression.

Many of the monuments were quite elaborate.

In addition to the monuments honoring state regiments, there were also monuments to regimental leaders.

It made for an interesting drive - plenty of places to get out and walk around - and the weather was just about perfect.

I'm glad we went but we are not likely to return. And while there are some stunning views of the Mississippi River in Vicksburg, the town really doesn't have much else to recommend it. Check out these shots of the Mississippi at sunset.

There are some casinos, but we're not gamblers. We're foodies and the restaurants in our hotel were closed except for the deli. Deli food is good for lunch but I'd rather have something else for dinner. So the second night we moved to a different hotel - Margaritaville.

They had taken what used to be a casino at whatever hotel that used to be and turned it into a giant arcade for kids. A "family" area. Wish I'd known that ahead of time. Let me just say that if I had to judge all Margaritaville hotels by the one in Vicksburg, I'd never stay at another one. If Jimmy Buffett only knew...

Battleship Memorial Park and the USS Alabama

I'd written a rambling post about the poverty I'd seen en route to Florida and in some areas of the Caribbean. I was going to have Mark give it a reality check to make sure that my rambling was at least coherent. But when I opened the post to read it to him, it wasn't there. It was the post I'd started with several days ago and had none of the edits I'd made yesterday. And since Blogger automatically saves your work every ten minutes, it was a bit odd. I'm going to take it as divine intervention. I assume I was not meant to share those thoughts with anyone BUT Mark. So we're going to move on to the next stop on our journey, the USS Alabama.

I've driven past it many times. You can't get to Florida from Dallas without going through Mobile - and that's where it's docked. I remember asking my son if he wanted to stop on the way to Florida years ago but he didn't and I wasn't going to make him. But Mark wanted to see it.

While I thoroughly enjoyed the Band of Brothers series, I'm not that much into war or weapons of war but I did find the visit interesting. It was like being transported back to the 1940s. It was set up to give you a good idea of what life was like on board the ship at that time.

Looking at it from the highway, you don't fully appreciate the size of it. I think it's far bigger than a cruise ship and of course, there's no Lido deck.

It was all going well until a group of school children turned up. Apparently they didn't have enough teachers and adult volunteers because those kids were just running amok. They were climbing on the hammocks, running up and down the stairways, and screaming at each other. We couldn't get away from the disrespectful little demons fast enough. When I was in school, field trips were meant to be learning experiences. I can't imagine what they learned from that trip.

But I learned that a new ship can be given the same name as an old ship, as long as the old ship is decommissioned.

Best advice - if you're going - go early. We arrived just as it opened and managed to have most of the tour finished before the children arrived. There was also a submarine and a number of aircraft to tour and view. We looked at some of the aircraft but decided to put the submarine off until another day.

Here are some photos.

And what does this tell you about Marines? 

The Voyage

I love warm weather and it's been too cold for too long around Dallas. So a cruise going to the Bahamas, Jamaica, Grand Cayman, Cozumel, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and St. Thomas had a lot of appeal.

While each island has it's own character, they are all gorgeous. I've concluded that I prefer the islands with volcanic origins.  They are hilly and lush rather than just flat. But again, they are all unique and all beautiful.

We were supposed to make a return trip to Half Moon Cay in the Bahamas (cruise line private island) but due to engine issues, that didn"t happen. Saved us all a bundle - we'd planned to splash out and get a cabana with a butler. But since we didn't actually get it, we did1n't have to pay for it. Plus the cruise line gave us $100 credit for our trouble. All in all, a good trip

Here are some photos.

Half Moon Cay, Bahamas

If you look closely, you can see the rainbow.

Jewel Dunn's River Resort, Jamaica

George Town, Grand Cayman

Two of the seven ships in port that day.

Cozumel, Mexico

Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic

San Juan, Puerto Rico

The streets are blue in Old San Juan.

There's a similar statue of Christopher Columbus in Barcelona.

St. Thomas, USVI

Overlooking Charlotte Amalie

Magen's Bay

Sunrise at Sea