how do you like it?

I'm not embarrassed to admit that for me, reading the real estate listings is really enjoyable. I joke that my favourite porn site is www.mls.ca. Even though we have just sold our house and are moving in a few days into our new place, I still can't stop looking at it. It's a sickness but it feels really good. I noticed today that they have added a new feature to my favourite site. Finally, they are providing the street address for houses on the site. Previously, you'd have to try to figure it out on your own. This makes browsing sooo much better.

I noticed when I was on the site earlier this morning that one of the houses we looked at on March 19 is still for sale. I know that this is not very nice but I kind of smiled when I noticed that they had dropped the price a whole $20K. The house has a LOVELY kitchen / sun room but the bathroom was literally disintegrating. Parts of the house were gorgeous and others, hideous. Mark and I decided, when we'd seen it, that the woman who owned the house was really into decorating but not so into actual maintenance. I'm still amazed at how little some folks do to sell their houses.

Our place took just over 2 weeks to sell (and that included a week of waiting around for an offer to play out) because we took the advice of all of those "how to sell your house" shows. It might seem extreme to completely empty your home of anything remotely personal but trust me, it works. If people can see your house and not your possessions, it makes a huge impression. Too many times, we were so busy trying to see past all the crap that folks left laying around, we couldn't tell what the house actually looked like.

Yesterday, Mark was chatting with a guy he works with, who is going to be one of our new neighbours. He gave Mark the skinny on the house because his wife is friends with the lady we've bought from. It was all very good news. Turns out that everything we suspected to be recently done, was recently done. Her partner is a handy man and is a maintenance guy for an appliance company. This explains all of the extra built-in features that the house has.

We're getting really excited about Friday. We're waiting to hear from the lawyer about signing off on things. I know I'm stressing about it a fair bit because I had some really whacked out dreams last night and I have gigantic butterflies in my stomach right now. I'll be fine once everything is signed. Until then, I'll try really hard to not puke. At least not while I'm at the office anyway!!