August 2013

We returned to Naperville to find the real estate signs in the yard and we started having showings right away which is good. As you know, we did a lot of vacuuming and sink cleaning for a couple of weeks. The house showed quite well and the realtor put together a lovely brochure. Diane would build a different table scape for each showing. She was awesome. She even spelled out the prospective buyers names with our scrabble game set as place cards. After they bought they mentioned to us how cool they thought that was. It was pretty cool. Diane really did her homework on staging. The realtor only made two suggested changes. The house was perfect.

We took the boys to the zoo one day and downtown to Navy Pier before school started. They enjoyed playing miniature golf and riding some rides. We had lunch at Gibson’s Steak House. They are growing up way too fast.

Our first warm prospect was a couple from Utah. We made her top three but not his top one. They bought a bigger home in Glen Ellyn, which is of course not Naperville. Then we started getting low ball offers from a couple moving from Dubai. We wished them well and told them to have a safe trip back to Dubai. Then they came back with a nice offer and an “as is” offer at that. After just 21 days we had sold our house.

You would think there would be a sigh of relief but there wasn’t. Then the attorneys got involved. Once the contract is accepted it is subject to attorney review. I still have a very bitter taste in my mouth. Their hostility is so unnecessary. We weren’t sure if we had a deal or not.

Then there was the appraisal. Would it appraise or not?

After living in the home for thirty years we failed the Radon test. Not because we developed Radon. No. Because since we bought in 1984 they lowered the standard. Apparently they were not getting enough business with the standard at 5 so the lowered it to 4 and now virtually everybody flunks. Radon people have a good Lobby in Springfield. So we installed a Radon mitigation system. It works because it dropped the reading to 0.9. The system draws air from under the basement floor and pumps it outside onto the school playground behind us so the kids can breath the Radon during recess. Why leave it under the basement floor, right? What good was it doing down there? I know.

August was spent fretting over the attorneys review and not knowing if we had actually sold the house or not. We also had to develop a game plan to liquidate all of our stuff as we planned not to take anything to Florida. We had to dismantle 43 years of stuff. We decided to have an estate sale. We thought we had good stuff and we were hopeful that someone would like to buy it. So, August melted into September.