I’m thinking of moving. My neighborhood is hot hot hot right now, for some reason, and I could get a lot of money for it. And I could move into a smaller, less-expensive place, without these rollocking two bedrooms and one bathroom and kitchen the size of a thimble.
Okay, but really. There are smaller houses out there.
Anyway, that part isn’t up for debate, really. But I’ve been thinking about this since right around I guess it was St. Patrick’s Day, because my pal Marianne and I looked at houses that day we were together. And what I want to know is, when did the market get hot?
My house stayed valued at less than I paid for it for years. YEARS. Like, way less than I paid for it. I bought it in April of 2008, which is pretty much the very worst time you could buy a house.
But then just this year–swear!–just this year, it’s gone way up.
And people wanna live in my ‘hood, man. It’s in a good school district or something. And the houses are cute, although not a one is fancy by any stretch. All the houses in my neighborhood were built between 1950 and 1954. I was the second house in this area. Peg’s was first.
Anyway, I’m looking at some cute places in up-and-coming neighborhoods, and a little bit out of town for Steely Dan’s sake. I can’t tell you how much of this is for Steely Dan’s ridiculous sake.
Just this morning I was in the bathroom getting ready and I heard all this pounding in the hall outside, and I thought, oh, Edsel has Blu. But when I opened the door, it was that damn gray cat. I think he was busying himself kicking the corner of the rug with his back evil cat feets. He was all, “wut.” when I opened the door.
Cat needs stimulation. And I’d prefer he’d have it away from, you know, cars and such.
So, Realtors® have been here (you’re welcome for the official way to write Realtor®) and they told me what I could get for my house, possibly, and after I pushed all my hair back down because STANDING ON END, I got really into the idea.
Last night I came home and decluttered a bit, so the real estate photographer can come photograph m’house.
Before
After
I also decluttered the kitchen.
Before. Why the old pictures gotta be so tiny?
And, welcome to my boring kitchen!
Boring kitchen, now with dog!
Oh my god, I just had a great idea. I should take all the pink dishes off that exposed shelf. Hang on…
After
What if I don’t move and just become a minimalist?
Anyway, so that’s what I’m up to, and it’s sort of obsessing.
Before. Taken in like 1812 or something. Could this be smaller?
Oh, I’m SUCH a minimalist. Man, do I love minimal shit. pfft.
Maybe I could just take some of those shelves out altogether.
See? You get obsessed.
Anyway, I’ve got to go. While we’ve been talking, Edsel has been out and in and wants to go out again. Steely Dan also went out, asked to come in, and is now meowing by the door to go out again. I hate everyone.
Talk at you minimally,
Simple June
Decluttering is always good before trying to sell. Just don’t take away too much and lose its charm. Those two cups look lonely.
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Good luck on finding a new wonderful house. We go pretend house shopping all the time. I don’t want to move really, but the adventure of living in a new life ( I mean house) sometimes tempts me.
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This is exciting! I hope you find a cute cute cute little house and have a little nest egg for yourself from the sale of this one. I want to be a minimalist but my husband insists on keeping every receipt and piece of paper he ever comes across. I throw things away when he’s not looking all the time.
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I’m sure your home will sell quickly. Wishing you success in finding and getting the house you want. When the market is hot, available houses can be in short supply resulting in bidding wars. That’s great for the seller, not for the buyer. Good luck on both ends of the equation.
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Oh, Vela Lugosi (formerly Vela Korr), just… UGH.
June you are an amazing declutter!!
Congrats in advance – I hope you get oodles of money that allow you to buy what you want but with a giant down payment resulting in a tiny mortgage!
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You wrote: “And what I want to know is, when did the market get hot?”
I told you (in a comment) it was hot about a year ago when you were having financial problems. (The in-town neighborhoods of Greensboro have been appreciating fairly rapidly for about two years.) And how did you respond to my helpful info? You got testy with me. Very, very testy.
You wrote: “My house stayed valued at less than I paid for it for years. YEARS. Like, way less than I paid for it. I bought it in April of 2008, which is pretty much the very worst time you could buy a house.”
Greensboro got hit harder by the housing downturn than Charlotte or Raleigh or Durham. At the low point (around 2012) you could buy a charming and well-kept 1920 Craftsman bungalow in Fisher Park (my favorite Greensboro neighborhood) for under $250,000, Now, you’ll have to shell out around $400,000 for the same house. Greensboro has some of the most charming older neighborhoods in the South.
You wrote: “But then just this year–swear!–just this year, it’s gone way up.”
Wrong. Like I said above, it’s been appreciating rapidly for about two years. How is it that I know the Greensboro market better than you do, and I don’t even live in Greensboro? Start paying attention, young lady. Jeez!
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It must be a great burden for you to have such depths of wisdom and insight into how other people should run their lives. At least you have the satisfaction of a thriving love life since there’s nothing women desire more than a man with a well thought-out plan to improve them.
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Dude, are you satire?
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No one gets me but June. But thank-you for making the effort. It means a lot to me.
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Gracious. I think my favorite part of this comment is the pearl-clutching about someone getting unnecessarily testy. Irony, table of one!
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If the housing market was up a year ago and it still up now then she’s in an even better position to sell. She has more equity in it now. Do the maths.
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Awesome job on the reorganization! I hope you can find something that fits all of the fur-based criteria and keeps your commute short enough that you can still bounce home before events and at lunch.
Lovely post, pretty June!
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This is exciting news! I still remember the work that went into moving. I swore I would never move again. Although I also remember when we just moved into this house, and how HUGE it seemed because we had no stuff. It is weird how stuff accumulates. I was talking to my daughter just a couple of weeks ago and we were planning on PRETENDING to move, just to clear out the crap. We’ll see how long I can trick myself.
Lovely post, lovely June!
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Your house is darling! And it has good vibes. It will sell in a jiffy!
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I used to stage houses. When your house is shown make sure you keep your animals and their litter boxes somewhere else. I have seen beautiful houses go unsold because of litter boxes. I actually had one woman say to me “I love this house but I’m never going to get that cat piss smell out of here.” Honestly I couldn’t smell it and I don’t have cats, but she SAW the litter box. It is a visual thing with a lot of people. I also had a lady who had 3 small dogs who stunk not at all and she had people walk out of her Open House because they could “smell” the dogs. Just a word to the wise.
ALso lovely home and lovely post Coot.
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You’re an inspiration to us all. Stepping up and taking charge of your finances and your life. Our little Juan is all grown up! (Wipes tear from eye.) Seriously.
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We are considering selling as well. Our neighbor across the street does real estate and she said the inventory is low so we would actually need to find a house to buy before we put our house on the market. She said it would sell that fast. Pretty amazing to me considering how bad off we were 10 years ago.
We actually want to build though, so we’d have to sell ours and rent while our new one is being built.
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Your pre decluttered pictures are tidier than my post deep cleaning pictures. So feel good about yourself.
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I am so happy to hear about your house value increasing enough to sell now because I remember when you were bemoaning its value vs. your mortgage in the past. Good luck! I can’t wait to see what cute home you end up in!
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You know I never give you advice, but here’s a bit of knowledge someone passed on to me.
“Don’t move west of your job.” The sun will always be in your eyes going to work in the morning & in your eyes of the way home. Someone, even me, will help you figure out which way is west.
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This is SO true.
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Ooooh, and I forgot to mention that someone took delivery of their house yesterday in what used to be billed as the largest mobile home park in the U.S. Traffic was all snarled as I followed two halves of a house through the ‘hood. Not my ‘hood, but the nearby mobile ‘hood.
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We have so much equity in our house and the market in our neighborhood is HOT HOT HOT. But I can’t think of a single place in the country I’d want to move to although my husband fell in love with Salida, CO when he was there last summer. It’s just a little too far from the ocean for me.
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I bet your house will sell fast. Just remember that everyone these days asks for the seller to pay closing costs so be sure to figure that into your asking price. My husband and I learned that lesson a couple of years ago when we sold ours and I wish we would have thought about it ahead of time.
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In fact, they told me these days that is no longer the case.
>
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Good, cause I think it’s wacky.
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We just bought a house this month and asked seller to pay closing, we live in NC.
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EEEK I upsized, then realllly downsized for a few years and now upsized just a bit… 1600 sq feet. (was down to 350 sq ft! )
I have gotten rid of so much and it feels soooo good! But, it is so easy to re-acquire! Stay out of thrift shops! ha ha
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The real estate in Atlanta is hot, as well. We could sell our house, but where would we move? I will just declutter this one. We have been in our house since 1976. I asked my husband where would we start if we moved; the basement, attic, house, work shop, or lawnmower buildings (we have three buildings for the mowers and yard tools). The thought of moving gives me nightmares. Sounds like a plan to downsize and cut living expenses. You have done an awesome job with your finances. All that hard work has and will continue to pay great dividends.
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Tee, I have lived in my house since 1977, and have pretty much run out of corners/closets/hideyplaces to store things. And I actually do get rid of stuff regularly. But since I am the only one in the house who cares about decluttering, there is only so much stuff i can get rid of. But I’m in a spring cleaning mindset right now and will run with it until it wears itself out.
June, your house is lovely, and I loved the bookcases/cabinets/nooks either way, you have such cool stuff. Good luck!
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I was too busy to comment on yesterday’s post, which had me laughing out loud the whole time.
I’m so glad to hear the market is good for you — I imagine there are many people who want to move into a home built when they BUILT homes. Solid and well-made.
I love the idea of being kind of away from stuff. Not out in the boonies, but close enough to civilization.
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I’m just going to say it: I love stuff.
I’m not a hoarder and cleaning the house makes me feel like I have a handle on life, so it’s not like you’ll see me on a TV show that horrifies you, but I do love to add to the decor with vintage and things of interest.
I love your flowered dishes, the kitchen scale and all of your furniture.
I hope you find a country-ish place you can relax and Eds can run in a big yard and Steely Dan can be safer in his galivanting.
Also, please, when you move, tally for us the number of posts on your current neighborhood site how many people post “Have you seen my cat?” (Insert photo of Steely Dan)
Let me pat you on the back/buy you a beer/stand up and toast you for your incredible work on your finances. The fact that you brought up your credit and killed off your debt also really helps you int he process (these are things I’ve never done, so if this were a cartoon my eyes would be replaced with stars right now, looking at you, Juuuuuunnnnneee).
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Oh my god, I hadn’t considered that. I should put out an “SD is moving” announcement on NextDoor.
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Yes. You should alert NextDoor. I took in a cat after I was informed the cat had been abandoned.
Two weeks later, his person ( kid) came back for him. I’m glad I saw It happen, because I would have been worried sick.
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I have so much stuff in our house it isn’t funny. How can two people fill up a 4500 square foot house? Evidently we both have hobbies that have run amok. I am trying to eliminate and rearrange though. I am minimal compare to my mother – who has not thrown anything away since getting married in 1954. I get all twitchy when we visit her and don’t have any flat surface to put a glass on.
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Oh my gosh, I love decluttering! I’m not one for having a lot of things around because I don’t know how to arrange them.
Our whole state is booming in real estate right now. We get so many postcards in the mail of “We want to buy your house” but if we sold there is no place we could afford to move to in our area. I’m excited for you to get to look at new-to-you houses though! I am addicted to Redfin.
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I am in a constant push to get rid of all the stuff in our house. When we moved from California we literally, not exaggerating, got rid of at least half of the stuff we own. And I look and we just still have so much stuff and I don’t understand what happened. We’re broke so we’re not buying stuff. Anyway as soon as I can use my hands again fully we’re gonna be doing another sweep of the house so my goal is to just have the whole house done by December. I figure that’s realistic.
I remember when the realtor told us how much we could get for our tiny 1941 house in California and I just about fell over and died. Downsizing into a much less expensive house has been the best financial decision we ever made. Most of our house was not being used at all. I’m excited to see what house you end up because we tend to have the same taste in housing. Good luck!
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It looks very nice. Good luck!
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my side hustle is helping people with minimalism. too bad i’m far away!
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That’s exciting!!! I HATE moving but every once and a while something happens to me and I MUST GET ALL OF THE THINGS OUT OF MY HOUSE. Good luck! I’m excited to see how it goes!
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Good for you for biting the bullet and making the jump. In my ‘hood, sure, we could get a bucket for our house, but then we’d need a BIGGER bucket to get into ANOTHER house of equal or teensy bit bigger size (if we could even find one – welcome to McMansionLand). It’s insane here. Staying put and getting rid of crap…
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Looks great! But Dude…where’s all of your stuff stuffed?
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We were told our neighborhood is hot as well but then, where to move to. Best of luck in your search and thanks for sharing, this is so exciting.
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Your house is adorable! If we were to move to your neck of the woods (I wonder where that expression came from) I’d bid on it! Also, you have NO IDEA how much ending a sentence with a preposition pains me! Good luck. This sounds like an exciting time for you.
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Now you’re making me feel like I need to minimalize my house, even though we are not selling it yet. We also bought during the Worst Time® to purchase a new home (2006) and have been underwater ever since. Until this year and now I think we’re breaking even. In any case, being underwater is clearly not a good reason for maximizing crap everywhere. Even my hiding spots are full.
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That is big news. Thanks for sharing.Good luck on all fronts.
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heee…I know how you love advice. Your bookcase would look taller if you put the visually heavier things on the lower shelves and smaller as you go up.
I love your house and I’m sure many peoples will as well. Maybe you could get into a bidding war?
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Looks nice! I just moved into a new condo. Was at my last place for 15 years. I cannot believe how much crap I had collected. Threw/gave quite a bit away and am into the minimalist look right now. My new place has hardwood floors which I am loving with two sheddy cats.
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