Slow week

After the long break between the last two updates, I wanted to get back to having a weekly update on the new house. The problem is that last week was pretty boring. In fact, it was probably the quietest week for activity since the foundation was done. The only changes we noticed were that the exterior rock was complete and the work on finishing the drywall continued. In fact, so few noticeable changes had been made that I didn’t even take any pictures.

After last week, the only exterior rock work left to complete was the last couple feet of the chimney and a small area around the garage entrances. Those were done this week and it looked like they spend the rest of the week cleaning up the mess from all of the rock work. I had hoped that the masons would start the inside work (fireplace and bar front) but they had not. I don’t know if they need to wait for the drywall guys to be complete or if they are saving the inside work for a rainy day, when they can’t work on an outside project. They did leave a nice pile of rock and a cement mixer so they will be back.

On the inside, only the drywallers had done anything this past week. And all they worked on was the finish work. I have done a little drywall work in the past so I know how time consuming the finish work can be. Doing an entire house must be a major pain. I like to do things with my hands. I keep wishing I had time to do work on the house and feel that I contributed to building the house. However, finishing the drywall is one part of the process I can feel happy leaving to the pros.

This past weekend we saw some increased traffic on our current house. During the first week we only had two people look at the house. (And one agent scouting houses for an investment client from California.) Although the initial feedback from the first shoppers was fairly positive, we didn’t receive an offer. The negative things we heard from the buyers were concerning things we can’t change (usually location based).

This past weekend started off with a showing on Friday afternoon. Then Friday night, the same realtor called and said their client wanted a second viewing Saturday morning! We had a live one! So Saturday morning we gave the house a good cleaning and polishing, hoping to make it shine. While we were doing that another agent called wanting to show the house over lunch. So our plans for the day went from killing an hour or so to leaving for several hours. We ended up taking the time to run out to the new house, have lunch out and getting a few errands done. When we returned home, it turns out a third agent had called while we had been out and they had already visited. Three in one day.

We got some good news Saturday night in that the people who visited the house twice had included us in their top three choices and wanted information on utility costs. I e-mailed that out that night but then didn’t hear anything Sunday. We didn’t hear anything either on Monday so we thought we might not be their top choice. Well today (Tuesday) they called up wanting a third showing and then followed that up with a request for a copy of the 2004 taxes. Very promising.

Posted by Ed Rozmiarek at March 22, 2005 4:27 PM