Open House and an Offer to Purchase

The local Realtor in town here has several listings in our subdivision. Last week they began advertising an area wide "Open House" on some of their listings. Participating homes would all be available for viewing at the same time this past Sunday afternoon. Another Realtor from a different agency found out about the event and posted "Open House" signs at their listing. So, we decided to take advantage of the situation and put up our own set of signs.

The day turned out to be a major success, we ended up showing the house twelve times in just over four hours! It was crazy, but turned out to be a lot of fun. Two couples were really interested and one of them came back yesterday evening to look at the house again with their kids and discuss an offer. Those discussions quickly turned to numbers and numbers turned into a contract offer to purchase.

The purchase is contingent on them selling their house first, but an offer nonetheless.

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Update: 8/6/2013
Received another offer on the house today (with no contingencies), so now we find ourselves in a very fortunate position of having two buyers trying to close the deal on or about Sept 13.
We're absolutely thrilled, but really hate knowing that one of these buyers won't get the house.
They are both great!

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Update: 8/27/2013
The second offer was finally accepted due to no contingencies and a short closing date.
All inspections are now completed and the Closing is scheduled for Sept 6.
We are working like mad to sell stuff and get the new place set up for us.


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Update: 9/2/2013
Empty house and final walk-through today.
Everything checks out OK and the buyer received final Credit Check and Confirmation from their bank.
At this point, we don't see any road blocks ahead for getting this financial "monkey" off our backs!

In other news, I see that Henny is working out the details on his steering wheel. He has his reasons to want that and I'm confident he'll do a superb job working out the details. What struck me though was how much smaller it makes the Center Cockpit appear.
I'm still leaning toward the Aft Cockpit configuration, but that decision is so far into the future that it's rather (depressingly) pointless to think about it now - even though I still do...

Next update should hopefully reflect a good closing and some bills paid off.

72 hours on the Market!

Only 72 hours after putting our house on the market we had four showings and worked out a verbal offer from a great young couple looking for a place to start a family! They will be consulting with a RE Attorney and their financial institution this week. We have been promised and are expecting an offer in our hands possibly as soon as the end of this week. The closing time will be middle November, but that works well for all involved and we're getting really close to our asking price.

So all that is really good news!
But that being said - anything can happen from now until closing, so no one is holding their breath.

Reset Button...

Sometimes you have to step back and re-evaluate your situation - even though you don't want to!

The ORIGINAL plan for this massive project has always called for starting our own F-39 sometime in 2017. This time frame (plus the 15 years I expect will be required to complete to build) was chosen to nearly coincide with my planned retirement date.

The problem (with me anyway) is scouring through all the other building blogs out there and feeling content to sit around waiting for the days to tick by to start my own build... I tend to get anxious and look for ways to get started, but the harsh reality is that our current situation will most likely lead to frustration and eventual failure.

Not surprisingly, the two main problems are finances and an actual build location.

I'm fairly confident to say that finances is a universal problem for all builders, there never seems to be enough of it to go around! Then there is the actual build location - our house is built into the side of a hill, it will not be feasible to build a suitable workshop (even if zoning would allow it). I considered renting a location, but I'm convinced that you will have a much higher build success if there is NO travel time between home and build location. I also believe you need to spend time EVERY day on the project, even if it is just cleaning up and prepping the next phase in order to maintain attachment and focus. In other words, it should be built right where you live.

I had determined to get started with some of the smaller parts now while working out the details of securing the financing and build site later on. That plan called for selling our house in five years and relocating to a suitable building area to start on the floats.

However, after much budget forecasts, manipulations of income streams and discussions with my family we have decided to make some drastic changes to that plan in order to effectively stack the deck in our favor. So then, instead of selling our house in five years, it is being prepared to go on the market in just three weeks! Once it sells, we will move into one of our rental properties and divert all income towards paying off our other debts and rental properties. That process is expected to take slightly over two years, depending on actual circumstances.

The rental house will only be a third the size of the one we live in now, but the kids are excited about the prospect of moving despite the fact that we will be crammed in there for a while. As for me and my wife, we are not so thrilled to move into a smaller house, but the idea of a substantial and sustainable income boost will be worth the price.

To say I have an AWESOME family would be the understatement of the year! I could not even begin to hope this project would be a success if there was some conflict about the time and financial commitment. However, I'm so excited to say that everyone is"on-board" with the new plan and all are willing to make some sacrifices to see it become a reality.

I'll be updating the blog every now and then - mostly to keep myself accountable and keep a record of progress. In the meantime, I'll keep lurking around the other building sites, learning all I can and looking forward to the day I can start my own.

For real this time!