Homeless

Photo by: SamPac

I'm homeless...technically, that is. Today we closed on the sale of our house. The buyer was nice enough to give us until the 15th of January to get out of the house, and we will hopefully only need until the 4th when we plan to close on the new house. So, like I said, I don't have a place of my own. We're just staying in some other girl's house for a bit until we can get our own.

Katie and I both are enjoying a week and a half off work, but it hasn't exactly been a real holiday. This house business has consumed the better part of our days off after christmas and between the new years holiday. Leading up to Christmas we had 2-3 stops a day seeing relatives and going to Christmas functions... I'm not complaining, but I sorta am. After Christmas we've had paperwork to dig up, appointments to keep, and papers... and I mean a gang load of papers... to sign.

Anywho, we had a low stress holiday and now we're focusing on getting things packed up, boxed up and organized for the move. For the first time we won't be recruiting family or friends. We're getting professional help to move our junk. I'm tempted to go through the stuff that we have in the attic and just trash most of it. If I haven't needed it in the last year (and it's not christmas decorations) what are the odds that I'll ever pull it down? Slim to none.

House, sold!

After a month's worth of open houses, calls and guided tours, this past friday we came to terms with a buyer for our house. We'll be closing at the end of next week on both homes.

I have to say that so far selling our home has been a fairly easy process. We didn't advertise the house in the paper, or list our open houses, only a FSBO (for sale by owner) sign in the yard along with a price and an infotube sheet and another sign on a busier street right outside the subdivision.

The worst part was having low turn out at the last open house and being lowballed ($12000 low) by a prospective buyer who we went out of our way to help. Those negatives are far outweighed by the learning experience of selling our home, along with the savings we and the buyer realized by not having a real estate agent involved (though believe me, they called). 6%!? Highway robbery.

If you're thinking of selling a home FSBO in Louisiana, check the real estate commission's website for standard forms such as the form you use to submit an offer. If you feel more comfortable with an agent, at the very least consider getting yourself listed on MLS (multiple listing sevice) through a discount mortgage broker and offering a commission only to a buyer's agent of 1-2%. On a $150,000 house the savings of knocking the seller's agent out of the equation could be $4500. That's not something I'm eager to let go of... especially not to someone who effectively does nothing but point people in your direction.

Anywho, we're going to be moving in early January... and I may even be able to turn the detached garage into a successful man room. I'll keep the blog updated.

My first HD experience at home

Friday afternoon I stopped by Wal-mart to buy an antenna so that I could grab a few HD channels from the airwaves. We have DirecTV, but don't have an HD compatible receiver and don't have the newer, bigger dish that's required to get the high-def channels. So, an antenna allows me to get the local channels in HD without having to upgrade or pay more money to DirecTV.

So, yesterday, I plugged the antenna up, fiddled with it for a while, then settled in the watch the LSU championship game. My 720p set looked great. I could see every little detail, read players jerseys, see the expression on a few of the players faces... I don't think I'm going to be able to watch football unless it's on one of the big 3 that broadcast in high-def. It may have more to do with the fact that I was watching a 27" tv from 13' away previously, but I really like the new TV setup.

As a matter of fact, I'm sitting in my leather man chair with my laptop rigged up to the TV, and have been doing this for the past few nights. My laptop is serving as a temporary home media center.

Anywho, I was able to figure out what kind of antenna I needed as well as what stations were available and the direction from which they are being broadcast by using Antennaweb.org. You type in your location ( I only put in a zip code, then selected my location on the map), then you'll see a list of stations along with their distance and direction. I'm going to be fiddling with the antenna a little bit more here in the next few minutes to see if I can get the rest of the stations a little more clearly.