The Weatherman

No one told us it rains in Seattle. Just Kidding. Well, we’ve been here for a day and a half and there is no sun. Cloudy and rain in the afternoons. Looks like it will be this way until Sunday…then we should see the evasive sun.

So far things have gone well (except for our buyers who are being difficult - more about that later). The trip up was smooth but very stressful. It took us 45 minutes just to check in our stuff (7 bags and 3 pets). The TSAs at the airport had me take each pet out of their crates one by one - no big deal except Oscar had already pee’d all over himself. So dad smelled like cat urine for the flight up…pleasant. I was able to cram all of our stuff into the mini-van with little room to spare.

Steph and I are going to start looking at homes with our realtor today and tomorrow. We’ll be checking out the I90 corridor today and then Shoreline/Edmonds/Lynnwood tomorrow. Steph and I will check out West Seattle on our own on Sunday.

Back to our home buyers. One thing to note, they are first time home buyers. Our house, like so many in the village have sloping issues. The heavy fireplaces caused these homes to settle lower on that side of the house. Sure, you can fix it, but no one has since it’s not worth it. Plus it doesn’t cause any immediate structural concerns. The buyers also want a larger living room so they want to knock out a wall (not our problem). They had a structural engineer investigate the foundation and the wall - this first engineer was not concerned with the sloping but suggested $8-10k of other foundation work (replacing some concrete footings).

Next came the home inspection…I’ve been part of about 5 home inspections and they typically take 60 to 90 minutes. Their guy took 3 1/2 hours. In 3 1/2 hours you will find tons of problems with any house. This guy makes the buyers fearful of the sloping issue…also, this home inspector was not familiar with homes in the village (based on a conversation I had with him).

Now the buyers want to bring in a second structural engineer…of course, he gives them a totally different opinion. He’s claims the house needs the sloping fixed at a cost of $25k. Crap…these guys will tell you anything you want to hear.

So what do I care? We just put the home back on the market and be done with it. Not so simple. Now that the buyers have gotten these multiple varying opinions - we are obligated to disclose all of this in the future. Any new home buyer will look at this as a mega foundation project - it will most likely scare anyone away. The sad thing is we could have asked for $820k for the home but we chose to ask for $805k since we wanted to sell it quickly and we understand that no home is perfect.

When we moved in we had a structural engineer investigate the foundation for us. He concluded that some work could be done, but wasn’t necessary. He was only concerned with the sloping assuming this was the only house that sloped, otherwise, no big deal.

Now we are in a waiting game.

At 7:56am this morning, Zachary Anthony Arthur turned 1 year old

I think he knew it was his birthday…he was very happy this morning. Well, he’s happy every morning, but more so this morning.

In his first full year of life, Zach has taken trips to Sonoma, Oregon, Carmel/Big Sur, Lake Tahoe, Michigan, and Seattle. He’s played in the snow, saucered down a hill, and gone wine tasting (multiple times). He experienced 1 degree weather in Michigan after his first airplane flight. He has visited major parks with redwood trees including Redwood National Park, Henry Cowell State Park, Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park, and the Rockefeller Forest. He’s been to a Giants game, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and the San Francisco Zoo. He’s even tailgated at an Oregon Ducks football game (against USC where they got crushed). And he’s strolled halfway across the Golden Gate Bridge (it was daddy’s first time).

That’s amazing list for a one year old. He is truly very special and Mom and Dad love him dearly. I hope year number two is just as adventurous…at least it’s starting out that way. Dad is taking a new job at Amazon and moving the family to Seattle.

We had two open houses this weekend (Saturday and Sunday from 1 to 4pm).  On Saturday our realtor tallied 40 people and on Sunday she counted 60.  Some of the Saturday people showed up on Sunday and some of the Sunday people returned twice…that is encouraging.

What a pain to setup for these things.  I feel we did a very good job at setting up our house.  We had a consultant help us ’stage’ our furniture, we replaced the sod in the backyard, we cleaned heavily, and we patched up some problem areas.

There is a broker’s tour on Tuesday and we’ll hopefully start seeing some offers after Wednesday.

As for the rest of plans, our stuff will be packed up on the 22nd and 23rd.  We fly up on the 24th and then the house hunting begins.  Before then I’ll have a week to run errands and such, like taking the pets to the vet and getting their airplane certificates.

Our house is on the market…here is the mls listing