and I had our first open house this past Sunday, so we spent a lot of time leading up to it tying up all the loose ends in the place..   I was feeling pretty ill, so I wasn’t pulling 100% of my weight…  But I still managed to do some cleaning while she finished off everything else…  While our place had been listed midway through last week, we held off on showing it until the open house, to kind of kick it off with a bang.

We were kinda freaking out because when we listed our place, there were two other units on the market in our building, both of which were priced much higher than ours (in my opinion, they are both ridiculously overpriced).  But at the last minute on Friday, another unit went on sale for a few grand less than ours.  From the pictures in the listing, it looked pretty comparable to ours, but it was on the first floor.  So we really went to town on our place so it would show really well.  On Sunday, we found out that not only did this other place undercut our price, but they decided to have an open house at the same time as us…  So on our way out of our place, we decided to swing by and check out our competition..  This turned out to be an excellent idea, as this place didn’t compete with ours at all…  It’s not like it was a tenement or anything, don’t get me wrong, but it certainly didn’t show anywhere near as well as ours..  The walls were all flat white, with lots of very visible patching, etc..  The shades were drawn, so even though it was noon on a beautiful Spring day, the place looked dreary.  The bathroom was in dire need of overhauling, something we just had done a few months ago..   They opened up the wall between the kitchen and living room, but the kitchen wasn’t terribly pretty, so it was a turn off for me..  And they closed off the archway from the living room to the bathroom, making the place feel really claustrophobic when you were in the front entryway.  All in all, I felt that our place looked so much better, and I felt good that people would visit this other place first (since it was on the first floor) before making their way up to ours…   It totally re-framed expectations and made our place look that much better.

So after seeing this place, the nervous feelings lifted and we were able to simply enjoy our lunch and the beautiful day.   Mauro, our agent, was expecting 12 or so people to come by, but whether it was the weather or the great pictures in our listing, we had 20+!  Corinna had been saying for the past week or so that she had hoped to get an offer quickly after the open house, but I was quite skeptical..  There were several comparable places on the market in our neighborhood which had been listed for weeks or even months…  But it was hard to deal with that data as the real estate market is always kind of slow leading into the spring..

Anyway, to make a long story short, a woman made an offer on our place a few hours after the open house, and by noon the next day, 24 hours after the start of our open house, we had agreed on a price… (When I say “we”, I really mean Corinna and this woman, since I don’t own any of our current place…)  Corinna and I were completely caught off guard by how fast this all happened, and we are totally chuffed…  Obviously the deal isn’t completely secure yet, so I’m not completely relaxed, but it certainly is helping me sleep easier.  The woman has scheduled the inspection for this Saturday (at 8am, ick) and wants to close by May 31st!