I’ve got some updates and pretty pictures to share with you.
First, though, there’s something more important to share. Big news. For a while I was leery about writing anything about it, for fear of jinxing everything or gumming it up in some dreadful way. But now it seemingly has built up too much momentum to be stopped.
Here it is: My mom’s house is being sold. Exclamation mark. This week. Double exclamation mark. Really. Triple exclamation mark.
The house has sat empty for the last four years, since my mom had her first bad fall and wound up in the nursing home. My wife and I went through all the contents during the summer of 2007 (after it became clear she wouldn’t be returning), going through everything, throwing some stuff out and keeping others.
If you aren’t aware, I am her only descendant–my brother died over 20 years ago, and he had no children. That means there was nobody else to do the tough work of managing my mom’s affairs and going through the household items (aside from my wife, who worked as hard as I did). It was all on our shoulders.
First, we hoped her neighbor’s son would be able take the house. He had served in Iraq, and his mother had called me, asking what plans we had for the house and to keep them in mind. We definitely did that. We would have given him a very good price, too. But he got injured in Iraq (his back, I think), and couldn’t take the house. Back to square one.
Early this spring, we finally went to a local real estate agency and got them involved. We had a few bites and a few showings during the summer, but nothing very serious and no serious offers. As time went on, I got pretty discouraged. We lowered the price (and it was pretty low in the first place), but nothing happened. A few people were interested, but no real offers were made.
Then, late in September, the agent said a couple had visited the house and was interested. A day or two later, we got an offer. We made a counteroffer. They made a counteroffer. We thought about it for a long time and decided to say yes.
It’s a lot less than we had hoped to get, but with the housing market the way it is and with how much the house is costing me (property taxes, insurance, heating oil, power, maintenance, anxiety), I finally said yes. Their offer sheet said they were planning to close the sale on Nov. 12.
Halfway expecting the process would break down somewhere, we started preparing for the transfer. That involved getting the last big items we wanted from that house to ours. But things changed about a week ago, when we learned that the buyers now wanted to close the deal on Oct. 16. Four weeks earlier than originally stated and just nine days later.
Now, it’s just three days.
I already had an appointment on Thursday morning to ride with my mom to a doctor’s appointment, and my wife found two guys who would go to my mom’s house that day to pick up the heavy furniture. I met them at about noon. Rather, I met him at about noon–just one guy made the trip, not two. So I was the other moving man, helping him load the items into the pickup truck and trailer.
He drove everything back home by himself (eventually finding a second man to help him unload), so now we have another sewing machine table, more bedroom furniture, kitchen chairs and a nice rocking recliner in the living room, among other things. I stayed behind, because my day was hardly over.
The doctor’s appointment was the first task, and that took quite a while. After we sent the furniture on its way, my to-do list included: dropping off a key so the buyers could get inside the garage; closing out my mom’s safe deposit box (where I found some title documents I had been looking for); meeting with the real estate agent; returning to the nursing home to meet with the caregivers about my mom’s care; and getting a copy of my dad’s death certificate, which, I was told, is absolutely necessary to closing the sale.
In short, it was a day of jumping through hoops–very busy, stressful at times, but in the end I think I got everything done that I wanted to. (I had made a list that I consulted from time to time.)
We had a potential problem about my mom signing off on the deal, since our title says she has a life estate. Since she broke the elbow of her writing hand in her most recent fall, she can’t write at all. But the real estate agent (after consulting the title company) said we can work around that. There will be a space for her to sign (with an “X”) on the deed, with witnesses and a notary public confirming that she made the X and thereby agrees to giving up the life estate (which preserves her right to live in the house–fat chance that can ever happen now).
The required inspections have now been completed, and all the lights are green. I have my dad’s death certificate. Fewer and fewer things can go wrong now.
The situation with my mom is sad, and she is not doing that well. But at least she understands what is happening and was happy to hear of the impending sale.
So that has been filling my life with anxiety and worry … which is now less than three days away from ending. This morning, I called Wisconsin Electric about switching the electric service to the buyers. I told the fuel oil company the same. At 11 a.m. Friday, the final papers will be signed, and the house will officially belong to someone else.
I still have some final expenses. Several connected to the sale process. Property taxes for 10 1/2 months of 2009. The real estate agent’s cut. And income taxes on the sale price–it’s regarded as taxable income. Even with the sale price, I’m still in the 15% bracket.
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Not much else to report. The news about the house outweighs everything else, anyway.
But I did manage to get some fall photos in recent weeks. Here are a few examples …
Here is a frosty morning. The temperature was about 25, but the sun was melting the frost except in the shadow of my car and a nearby garage. Interesting effect …
I drove north to Baraga last Friday night for a football game, and the leaves seemed to be at maximum brilliance–except that the sun was behind the clouds for most of the trip north. I only got to see the leaves in full color from a distance. Thank goodness for 24x lenses …
I made a mental note to make the same trip over the weekend. Saturday was mostly cloudy. The clouds moved out early Sunday afternoon, and my wife and I made the trip. But … the peak color was now obviously past, even though it was just two days after my last trip. The brilliant color had dimmed and darkened.
It was a nice drive on a sunny day, anyway.
drdog