Adventures in Home Showings

It was only 5 years ago that we sold our last home and yet, my memory fails me that any funny or out of the ordinary thing happened during the process. We had a handful of showings and a low ball offer that we were willing to work with. Our house sold within 3-4 weeks I believe?

Oh, but this time...the stories just continue and continue :) What a funny/random/CRAZY month of August we have had! I attribute it to the fact that we have 3 children now, my husband has to work odd hours which means he can't help much, and we don't have carpet so our dog's hair shows if we don't sweep daily. It has been quite the adventure so far with no offers yet. Boo. Maybe soon.

So, here are a few of the stories so far: We've been able to laugh about most of them although at the time we weren't always amused!

*Showing #1: The first weekend we put it on the market so the house was freshly painted, organized, as perfect as it was going to be. We came home to find the potential buyer had dug his finger into a very small hole in our wall and attempted to see if it was plaster or sheetrock. He must have been pretty curious because our very small hole became a significant one that we had to fix. Umm, thanks random stranger!

*Showing #4: Aaron was working during this one and I had a birthday party to take the kids to. I had left the house spotless and was going to pick up the dog quickly before the house showing at 2:30. Leaving myself plenty of time, I got home at 2:00 and thought I could quickly get the dog and double check the house. As I opened up the door to the house, I saw a car out front and just KNEW it was our 2:30 showing-coming a half an hour early! I grabbed the dog and ran out the door without double checking the house. The dog had decided to have fun in the house (something she never does anymore!) and left our couch cushions completely overturned and dug up a spot for herself on our bed-leaving it a mess and unmade! Ahhh!! So embarrassing! However, that was the only person who called for a second showing...

*Showing #4 Second Showing: After the fiasco with the dog and coming SO early, we left our house especially spotless for the second showing. I had made fresh cookies for her, literally cleaned every tiny area of my house and we were SO hopeful. She was supposed to arrive at 4 so we left an hour early JUST in case she came so early again. At 4:15, we got a call that she never showed up and decided against it. Oh.my.goodness! Feeling a bit defeated, we devoured the cookies and decided not to go to as much trouble again :)

*Showing #6: Last Friday night, we had an hour's notice before a showing....we've kept our house as clean as possible so it wasn't that big of a deal but still a bit of a rush. Little did we know that an hour would be plenty of time compared to our next showing!

*Showing #7: I don't recall ever looking at houses on Sundays. I guess I just assumed that Sundays were off limits so on Sunday afternoon, we were finally relaxing in a house that was "lived in" and not show worthy. At about 2:00, my very clean husband said, "Maybe we should just clean the house, just in case." Reluctantly, we did the dishes and tidied up the place so we could rush out if need be. At 3:00, we got a knock on our door. No joke! It was a realtor and a young couple asking us if we didn't receive a call about a showing! Ahhh! We asked them if they could give us 30 minutes and they must have heard "a few minutes" because they stood by our front door, waiting for us to get out. Our kids were still napping so we grabbed them and their blankets, tidied up the rest of the house and were out the door in 5 minutes flat! Needless to say, we haven't heard from that couple. HA!

*Showing #8: They came 45 minutes later than what was told to us. I had just parked the van in the back, unhooked Tristen from his carseat (thinking the showing was over!) when I saw a person walking to the door. I quickly hooked Tristen back up and we drove around the block until it was finished.

After all these crazy showings, I wish I could go back to when I was looking at houses and realize that the houses with young children were just plain brave and amazing to try to sell their house with little kids! I would have ONLY looked at houses that I was really serious in....because it's just mean to kick a young family out of their house for 1-2 hours each day while you say, "Just for fun, let's look at this one." :) Oh boy...how my perspective has changed :) Thankfully we can laugh about it and know that it's just a house-which is really a pretty trivial thing :)

Sorry, that was a really long-winded post but it's something funny that has been happening as of late. Now if only one of them would actually want our house, then we could relax just a bit!

Hopefully this weekend I'll finally have time to write about Connor's birth and how we came up with his name...I'm so behind on posting things! Sorry!! :)