Good luck to you and your family. Hope all will be healthy.

Best wishes on a quick sale and good medical news.

You have a PLAN! And it's a rrealistic one. Here's hoping all goes smoothly for you all from here on out.

Thank you. I feel so fortunate that our family is intact that it seems greedy to wish for more. I hope I'm not too biased about our current house, but I truly do think it has a better floorplan, nicer upgrades and certainly a better lot than the new houses in our neighborhood. If anything here sells, this house should, especially after the sprucing up we will have done by the time it's listed.

Meanwhile, we're seeing small signs of medical progress. We hope for sufficient improvement to eventually allow for some degree of normalcy and, hopefully, no more severe pain. Some folks think we're crazy to deal with buying a new house, moving & selling this house, but it has actually helped to have all that to think about. Making plans for the future helps us to believe that we have one. The new house will be far more comfortable for all of us, and will make life at home easier, too.

Best wishes for a terrific 2008 for all of y'all.

I certainly wish you all the best of luck, keep us posted with developments as they arise.

I wish you the best of luck both in the house sale and the medical issues your family is dealing with.

I noticed you said you were moving before putting it on the market. Do you think you can leave the majority (basic living/dining/few beds/dressers) of your furniture in the house for sale when moved? I know this has been discussed here over and over whether to sell the house empty or not, but everything you read is to keep furniture in the house to sell it faster. I know I prefer no furniture like many on this board, however I don't think this board represents the average buyer. The reason I prefer no furniture is so I can see any and all flaws and because it often means the owner is willing to negotiate on the price and I can make a lower offer. I know you would want to negotiate however you'd have to wait for the buyer that has the imagination to see furnture and stuff in the house.

"Do you think you can leave the majority (basic living/dining/few beds/dressers) of your furniture in the house for sale when moved?"

Lyfia, in this case we will go ahead and move everything. Like you, I prefer to see empty houses, but also agree with you that not everyone can envision how a house will look when furnished. So we'll just hope for the best.

Frankly, some of our furniture would not be an asset. It was purchased for a far more contemporary house and is not in keeping with the very traditional style of this one (and traditional is key in this market.) We're giving some of the most contemporary furniture to a relative and donating some. If not for the paint color issue, I would supply our agent with photos of the more traditionally furnished rooms that I took before the recent crisis. We've viewed quite a few houses that have furnished photos in the listings but have been shown vacant.

Dh is more than willing to trade the reduced hassle of a single move for money. He did not even see the new house until after I signed the contract, and we'll close this week. He just wants to know where to show up after work next Monday.

I've no doubt that some potential buyers will hope to get an amazing deal because of the circumstances. We've been in that position also. I know we'll sell for less than we would have otherwise. But on the plus side, the builder from whom we're buying the new house took a very large price cut in order to close this year.

Thanks, y'all. This forum has been very helpful in reducing some of the stress.

I hope you have a speedy and easy sale. Reading between the lines it seems your child was in an accident of some kind? I hope he/she recovers his/her good health very soon.

Thank you. Unfortunately, there were emergency operations combined with multiple misdiagnosis and poor treatment, as well as severe adverse reactions to some Rx meds, all of which was/is complicated by a newly diagnosed severe chronic condition. We hope to avoid more surgery, but won't know for months. Our formerly robust child is now frail and must remain on TPN (nothing to eat or drink) for months. Even when the current crisis is over, life will not return to "normal." Dh thinks that we may need to provide permanent care & support. I hold out hope that the future will be brighter.

More on topic - the new house is very well suited to our needs. The builder is really going the extra mile to complete some details and extras that we truly did not expect given the loss he's taking. Our RE agent is also making a great effort to handle as many details as possible for us (such as appointments to measure for window treatments & for the security system.) We've bought quite a few houses, and this deal is the largest yet is going more smoothly than any other. The only disappointments we've had were with our insurance company and the guy who installed the security system. Both have been replaced by good folks referred by our RE agent.

It's all more than a little surreal. In some ways, it's hard to be excited about the new house because of the circumstances. On the other hand, the new house feels like a good place in which to heal, both physically and emotionally. Even if the ultimate resolution to the health crisis is not what we want, I think that the new house will make it easier to adapt to a very different future than any of us expected.

I wish you the best for the future.

I wouldn't worry so much about buyers taking advantage of you because of your situation - the sad fact is that in our world they will not believe that it isn't just a sales gimmick or worse. In your situation you might be more vulnerable to those that you think are working toward your interests - how would a potential buyer even be aware of your situation unless *your* agent either directly or indirectly informed them?. Vulnerability in others can bring out the very best in some and the very worst in others.

You seem to be allowing enough time (around 90 days) to find the market price for your house.

I am however a bit confused about the possibility of a 100k loss while priced at just 10 percent less than new construction around you. It is like a math story problem riddle. Could you give more information on your estimated sale price and approximate area of the country (or world)?

As was said above you seem to have a reasonable plan.
Best of luck to you.

Thanks for the good wishes, Cheapheap. As for the estimated loss, it's based on our expected price compared to what we paid a year ago minus RE commission and closing costs on the sale. The builder has increased his prices on new homes, and I hope will continue at his current level so that we can underprice the neighborhood and attract more potential buyers.

I hesitate to use actual prices, only because some folks seem to get upset when others talk about housing prices that are higher than the norm for their area, and I don't want to start that discussion here. Also, I do realize that we're very fortunate to have been well rewarded for 30+ years of hard work. Even in the current market, the lender keeps throwing "money" at us (debt actually - HELOC, unsecured credit line, etc.) partly because we've been so frugal in the past.

Frankly, our present situation scares me witless, but I'm trying to trust that things will be better very soon. We do have a guaranteed payout coming from dh's employer in the first quarter (thank goodness we deferred some compensation in years past) and that will help with the two mortage payments. A lot of dh's compensation has been in stock, and it's down over 30%, so we're not in a position to cash that out. Medical bills so far total over half a million. Once the new year begins, we'll have to pay the large co-pays until we hit the max again and the insurance takes over.

Our RE agent has been great about coordinating so many things and is really helping to ease the stress. Unfortunately, a few details still are not complete on the new house, due to the holidays, but should be finished next week. I'm a lot more stressed about nurses and lab techs and other medical personnel who've failed to do their jobs properly than about the house.

The painters are nearly finished at our former home; rainy weather delayed the exterior trim repainting. Our RE agent has arranged for his own housekeeper to clean the house tomorrow, and the photographer will take pictures next week. An open house will be held this weekend, and probably most weekends until the house sells. The builder of the new houses in the neighborhood has dropped prices a little, but we will still be priced below the competition. Activity has picked up in the last few weeks, so we're cautiously optimistic.

On the medical front, the news isn't quite so good as the doctors now think another operation is unavoidable, but our child isn't yet healthy enough to withstand surgery. More than ever I am glad we moved, since the new house is a better place in which to recuperate because it has a second bedroom & bathroom on the main floor as well as some beautiful views from the patio.

We're hoping that our former home sells quickly, but are now prepared to handle both mortgage payments for up to a year (please don't let it be that long!) I admit that it hurt to see the settlement estimate and to realize how much we'll lose, but it's still the right thing to do.

We also have a much smaller house in another city that will go on the market this summer, once it's vacated by our other child. Today I received the good news that the painters working on our former home are willing to travel to the other house once it's empty to repaint it in preparation for selling. I estimate that we can repaint the interior walls (I can just touch up the trim), recarpet (4 smallish rooms), and do some other updating for about 1% of our expected sales price. It's in a pretty good market, and I think that house should sell quickly. By the end of the year we hope to be down to one house and to have reduced our debt to less than half its value. More importantly, I hope that by mid-year there will be no more need for home health care and we can relax and enjoy the new house. The new "normal" will be a lot different than before, but maybe we'll have gotten to the point where dh & I can handle things on our own.

Thanks again for your good wishes.