Forging Ahead

I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas and a safe and happy New Year. Ellen and I decided to stay home and stay off the streets again this year to celebrate the coming of 2012.  The couple up the street rang the door bell on New Year's Eve to invite us over for a little get together around their fire pit with some of their friends.  We should consider them our neighbors but we really haven't spent any time with them only a wave as you pass on the street.  We had a great time and enjoyed being invited to a new circle of friends.

Now that we've had some time to digest the news about the "State of Real Estate in Florida" we have come to a couple of conclusions. First, we can't change what has happened to the real estate market in our part of the country and "it is what it is". The second thing after talking to a lot of people in the real estate market, some who are friends of ours, is it doesn't appear that it will change within the next 3 - 5 years. Some are even saying real estate prices could go down even further before it begins to turn around. With all of this wonderful news we have decided to forge ahead with our plans to sell the house and move into an RV park until the day comes we can take off. We could continue making mortgage payments for a couple of years and still have to go to closing with cash in our pockets or we can sell now and go to closing with cash in our pockets and pocket the mortgage payments for a couple of years. When you look at it that way it just makes sense to continue with our original plan to sell now.

With the decision made, we have spent the last couple of weekends getting things together for a second yard sale.  We have taken pictures of the bigger items and put them on Craig's List and will probably have items for Ebay.  The realtor told us that we needed to "stage" the house.  Staging is the process of removing all of your personal belongings leaving generic items so the house looks less cluttered and the vision of their items can be imagined. I guess we have our work cut out for us for awhile.

Until next time...