Innocuous In Innisfil Has MovedOver the last month my wife and I have been considering downsizing, moving from a large house to a condo. It was always the plan, we need our home equity to continue to retire comfortably, but we're now considering it 5 years earlier than anticipated. It's a bit scary jumping back into the real estate market after 15 years on the sidelines. Depending on the market we'll make a move late this summer or early in 2025.
This could be a long drawn out thread...
Some initial observations on our downsizing journey:
- open houses are very busy. Lots of people looking, few are buying.
- always wear slip-on shoes to open house. Tying shoes in a condo hallway in your late 60s is not graceful.
- when looking for info online, never provide an email or phone # to access content. You'll get spammed immediately by agents.
- a room 3.5 ft by 4.5 ft is NOT a bedroom.
- trying not to think about how much stuff we have to get rid of.
#RealEstate #CondoLife
- open houses are very busy. Lots of people looking, few are buying.
- always wear slip-on shoes to open house. Tying shoes in a condo hallway in your late 60s is not graceful.
- when looking for info online, never provide an email or phone # to access content. You'll get spammed immediately by agents.
- a room 3.5 ft by 4.5 ft is NOT a bedroom.
- trying not to think about how much stuff we have to get rid of.
#RealEstate #CondoLife
Wife and I went out for dinner last night (local diner, banquet burgers for both of us) and discussed next steps on our downsizing and new home journey.
1) Create a punch list of things that need to be patched, painted, repaired or completed prior to listing our current home.
2) Start looking for a local real estate agent who will sell the house. It's early but we can get valuable info from them to help us prepare.
3) Agree on location we want to move to.
With regards to that punch list, my wife has created a Google Keep Notes file this morning that already has 50 items in it. That's just inside. We have almost an acre of property and I'm confident she'll find more once the snow melts.
She pointed out that my procrastination is to blame for most of the list. I promised that I would correct my behavior... starting tomorrow...
So I'm painting two doors and about 40 feet of trim today. Somehow when we finished the basement over a year ago we hung 17 doors (7 regular and 10 bifold panels for closets) and they only got a coat of primer. In my defense, I dropped my golf handicap by 4 strokes last summer.
80's playlist is making the work go quicker. Including this classic remix...
#DIY #Painting #MyPlaylist
https://youtu.be/huavJMGUbiI?si=xiYY8wvAlICgb0T8
Bronski beat - Smalltown boy (12 extended)
It's now 3 months later, and despite the completion of dozens of tasks, the punch list is getting longer. I think my wife and I have to start leaving some home ownership excitement for whoever purchases this place.
We have selected an agent to sell our house who is local, very knowledgeable, and highly rated. She also told us that our home is worth less than we expected. The current market doesn't care about our feelings.
We have selected an agent to sell our house who is local, very knowledgeable, and highly rated. She also told us that our home is worth less than we expected. The current market doesn't care about our feelings.
We are also 75% sure that we will end up in #Barrie, although we're not sure if it will be a condo or a small house. For our budget, we will have a choice of hundreds of homes in that city, plus an opportunity to live near Kempenfelt Bay and a GO Station. We also have an agent selected to help us search, and we have a visit scheduled in the next few weeks to look at options and tour the area.
The actual move could still be a year away, but it's starting to feel real.
The actual move could still be a year away, but it's starting to feel real.
We have now visited the Barrie area 3 times in the last month, both to scope out different neighborhoods and to view a few potential homes to buy. We are set on a detached house as the condo lifestyle isn't for us, and the monthly fees can take a bite out of our retirement funds. Innisfil, which is just a few minutes east and south of Barrie, is the focus of our new home search. We like the more rural feel, and there are several beaches within minutes of most Innisfil neighborhoods.
We also met with the home stager who works with our selling realtor and got a huge list of recommendations. We have lots of antiques which she thought were lovely, but they all should be moved out for photos. Apparently, 100+ year old furniture is not what younger families are looking for, and she would prefer to stage our house with something cleaner and cooler. Kinda hurt our feelings a bit, but we also know she's trying to make us more money. I'll get over it.
It's been a crazy week. On Monday we met with our selling agent and planned out next steps to list our house. A sign goes up July 8th..... yikes. Spent all week patching, painting and purging. Also repaired and reseeded our front lawn. Saddest event - taking down my golf net in the garage. Apparently people want to see the entire space and are not cool enough to use half a garage for golf.
It has been an exhausting week. Repairing, repainting, purging and cleaning. Yesterday the staging company came and took away half of our furniture. Today they spent 4 hours putting in new stuff to make our house cooler than us. And a metric ton of pillows. All 5 bedrooms now have between 9 and 11 pillows - all decorative. And no room on a sofa or chair because of pillows. Photos were also taken today and the listing should go live on Monday.
BTW I had an interesting conversation with the owner of the staging company. She has a substantial business with over 50 houses using her inventory for homes for sale, short term rentals or video production. She has over 150 inventory items in our house alone. She mentioned keeping track of stock was a sizeable issue and I told her she needed RFID technology. She had never heard of it so I promised to send her some info.
#RFID
#RFID
Cassie is rubbing herself all over this chair from the staging company. Thankfully they are both the same color.
Our real estate agent has signs all over our house and it feels like we're living in a public building. I'm breaking lots of rules.
The listing went live on Monday and the HouseSigma app shows that it's popular with a ranking of 91 out of 100 (listing clicks plus marked as favourite). We had an agent open house today, which was well attended apparently, and there are two showings scheduled for later this week. In a slow market, that's encouraging.
We had a house showing today, so Harley and I went for a 7.5 km hike on our favourite trail across the road, which connects to the Bruce Trail.
The market is very slow here in Caledon, and we've only had 4 families look at our house in just over 2 weeks, including an open house. And our agent has warned us that August will be slower. Although we're priced right in line with the market, we might lower our price in September to spark more activity.
Another open house for us today, which means a busy morning cleaning and reconstructing the staging. We have a photo archive so we know where the 482 pillows are supposed to go. We're still working on the correct application of the "dent" in the top of designated pillows. Practice makes perfect.
Five open houses, including ours, in the surrounding rural area today. Three are more expensive and the other is very close to our market price. Totally useless comparison but I feel better.
Five open houses, including ours, in the surrounding rural area today. Three are more expensive and the other is very close to our market price. Totally useless comparison but I feel better.
I haven't added to this thread in a few weeks because not much is happening. Our listing expires today and in the past 60 days we have had 4 open houses which combined with scheduled showings has resulted in 10 groups actually viewing our home. Everyone loves the house but not enough to make an offer.
That amount of activity is apparently very positive in this slow market. Our agent and other contacts all said that was excellent based on where our home sits in the market - in our rural area there are only 14 houses that are 5 bedrooms, 3 full baths with 3,000+ square feet. None of which have sold since July 1st. In all of our area, across the hundreds of detached house of all sizes, only 10% of the inventory sold in August.
The market, in terms of low sales, is worse in our preferred location for a new home. There are hundreds of homes availabe in South Barrie/Innisfil, and prices seem to drop weekly. We've viewed several online that we think look perfect, but we're resisting the urge to view them in person. The time to buy is excellent but we don't want to think about a new home until we have a firm offer on our existing house.
So we are relisting tomorrow for another 60 days with a small price decrease. Our agent is confident that buyer activity will pick up and the recent bank rate reduction will help peak interest. Could be a busy fall with a moving date before Christmas. If we don't get any offers then we'll take it off the market and restart our efforts early in 2025. Thankfully we are not desperate and can take our time to do this right.
We had an open house yesterday, our 1st since relisting a week ago. Eight groups visited which almost equalled the total amount of viewings we had in our first 60 days. Three were very interested, one of those was here for the 2nd time. The repeat visitors are selling a house in Brampton and are waiting for that to be complete before making any offers on a new home. Only 1 day of data, but market appears to be less sluggish going into the fall.
Stranger Tractor (has moved)@paulbusch Glad that things are picking up for you. We have a similar situation: got an offer conditional on buyer selling their place, will know next week. In the meantime, we’ve moved from Toronto into our Hamilton house that closed last week.
@haggersnash
I hope your conditional offer closes with no issues. There's nothing wrong with owning two houses but ideally they would be in different countries :-)
I hope your conditional offer closes with no issues. There's nothing wrong with owning two houses but ideally they would be in different countries :-)