They say that moving is a traumatic experience, one of those major life changes like births, deaths, marriage, and retirement. My own experience sort of bears this out. We certainly dreaded moving as much as we looked forward to it after my retirement. In fact, we more or less decided not to attempt to combine retirement and a move from Virginia back to Texas, and so took about a year to prepare for our big relocation.
Most of our anxiety was associated with selling our condominium. We had lived there for more than twenty years, and were very settled in. We also had accumulated a lot of stuff, much of which was stored off site in a nearby Public Storage facility. The condo itself was in reasonably good condition, but there were some issues we expected would need attention. Our main preparation for putting the place on the market was watching many hours of HGTV, where we learned some valuable lessons. For example, it seemed clear that buyer's tastes are so unpredictable that it would be foolish to do anything other than make the place presentable. So we spent many months decluttering and cleaning. Then in the early spring we called in a realtor.
Our personal experience with real estate agents has been limited. In all our years of marriage, we'd only had one realtor, the woman who helped us buy our condo. But there were several realtors living in our condo community who had excellent reputations among our neighbors, so we called in one we had heard only good things about, and he proved to be worth every penny of his commission. First, he encouraged us to ask much more than we thought reasonable for our very clean but mostly unimproved one bedroom plus den, two bath apartment. He said he thought the market was beginning to show signs of improvement, and we could always come down later. Then he counseled patience, which proved to be exactly the right advice. Within only a few weeks, just a little more than a month, we had an offer very near our asking price.
As we began to recover from the shock of selling much more quickly than we anticipated, we realized that we had no plans for moving, and our buyer was asking for an early settlement. We told our agent to try to negotiate a few more weeks for us to pack up and move out, because at that point we had no place to move to. So we went online and looked for something to rent in Texas. We knew that the little community we had been watching for several years had many houses for sale, but few rentals, and very little that we had found appealing and in our price range. When we searched the real estate site, there were two or three possibilities, but only one that looked right for us. I was tempted to call right away, but for some reason we waited until the next day. When I did call the agent, she said that they already had an application, but she would call back if that wasn't accepted by the owners. Our hopes were dashed, and I was kicking myself for not calling right away, then she called back within the hour and said the other application had been rejected. I said we'd take it, figuring we could change our minds if we found anything wrong. Then I called a friend, who lives a little over a mile away from the house we were considering, and asked him to check it out. He said it looked great, and the next day we leased it for a year.
With a house rented, we at least had some place to move to, so we went online again to find a mover. I joined Angie's List, which helped a lot, and found several prospects. We invited three to come out to give us estimates, and two actually showed up. We chose the slightly lower bid, which was also a guaranteed amount, and set up the moving day with the condo association. Moving in or out of a condominium is complicated, as we knew from experience, so we started filling out forms, paying fees, and telling our moving company the condo rules. Then we started buying boxes and moving supplies and preparing to pack, both everything in the condo, and things that were not ready to ship in our storage unit. With less than a month to get everything ready, we tried to get rid of as much as we could before moving. There were many trips to the Alexandria recycling facility, the Salvation Army, and Goodwill. Then there was the loading dock, where we left many items for our neighbors to sift through before they were hauled away by the trash men.
The next few weeks were spent packing. I'm still not sure how we managed to get everything ready by moving day, but we did, with hours to spare, or maybe it was minutes. In fact, we did do some last minute packing while they were loading the truck, but for the most part we were ready to go, and the movers even complimented us on our efficient packing and preparations. A crew of seven loaded all of our furniture and boxes from both the condo and the storage unit in a matter of hours. They finished well ahead of the 5 PM deadline set by the condo association, and did no damage to the halls or loading area, so we got our $300 cash deposit back that afternoon when I returned the elevator key. It was nearly the end of May and we were coming up on the Memorial Day holiday, so our driver told us delivery would be after the holiday, around the first of June. That was actually a good thing, because we still had to clean the condo and then drive ourselves down to Texas with all the personal stuff we had yet to pack up in our little SUV.
After all the hurry, our closing was delayed because the buyer's lender didn't finish all the paperwork on time, but the title company let us sign on our appointed day, and the next morning we were off to Texas. A few days later we had a moment of anxiety when we got email from the title company telling us we needed to sign one more document, but fortunately we got the message while we were near a major urban area, and were able to stop off at a FEDEX office, print the document, and FAX it back without delay. Next stop was the little resort apartment we were staying in while we waited for our stuff to arrive. We drove by the house, and were relieved to see how nice it was. While we were packing, we had ordered a new refrigerator, which our friend saw to the installation of, and turned on the utilities, so the house was ready for us. Our frined lent us a folding bed and some sheets, and we stayed in our new house the night before the movers arrived so that we would be there early in the morning. And it was good we were there, because they came early, and by shortly after noon on June 2nd, we were moved in.
Our original plan, if we could actually call it that, had been to buy something in Texas before the condo sold, so that we could avoid the trauma of two moves. But as time passed, we thought better of that, or just realized it was not going to happen. And anyway, there was no practical way to determine the timing of such an elaborate process, which would have involved at least one long trip back to Texas to find a house to buy. Then the condo sold much more quickly than we anticipated, and the decision was more or less made for us. We were just happy we had found such a nice house to rent, and now we had a year to look around for one to buy. And so we began looking, not with a sense of urgency, but to see what was available, and there were some interesting things to look at and many houses to choose from. We continued searching online and looked at a few that seemed appealing. We even called one seller's agent to look at a house near where we were renting, but we still felt it was too soon to make a decision unless we found something perfect.
We were being flexible, but we did have some requirements. First, we wanted a house with a nice view. What's the point of living in the Texas hill country if you don't have a nice view? But Joy doesn't like hills, especially steep grades on roads or driveways, which is a complication. Then, we also wanted a one-level house, no stairs to go up and down in our declining years. We felt we needed at least three bedrooms and two baths and about 2000 square feet of living space to accommodate all our stuff. Joy wanted both a study and someplace for me to play my guitars, as well as a separate room for her to do her crafts and pursue her own interests. I wanted a large garage, big enough for the car and storage, preferably a two-car garage or larger. I also wanted as little yard to care for as possible, something natural and attractive, but low maintenance. I'd rather read than mow. And there were other things we wanted, if possible, but felt we could change latter. For example, we wanted hardwood floors rather than carpet. And Joy had other requirements she was looking for in her ideal house.
The more we looked, the more it began to occur to us that the house we were renting had nearly all of these things: one level with a beautiful panoramic view of the hill country looking toward Austin, an enormous, finished two-car garage with additional attic storage, a natural landscaped yard with very little grass, situated on a rise but with easy street access with very little grade. We had a little over 2000 square feet, three bedrooms, two baths, hardwood floors, and a large laundry room equipped with a brand new washer and dryer. In addition we had this large front porch we didn't even know we wanted until we had one. Within a few months we were feeling so much at home in the place, we were starting to be a little sad at the prospect of moving somewhere else.
And then it occurred to us: why should we move when we could buy this house? We knew it had been on the market before we leased it. So we told our landlords that we were interested, and within a few months we'd negotiated the purchase of the house and the vacant lot next door, which they also owned. In the process we also learned a great deal about the house we were buying. It was a custom home, nicely finished inside and out. Nevertheless, we had a home inspection and found that the house was in good condition, but there were a few issues. The house is a little over ten years old, frame construction on a slab foundation, with a stone and stucco and hardie plank exterior. Everything looked sound, but there were some minor cracks in the stucco suggesting possible water penetration, so we had that inspected and got some estimates for repairs, which the owners agreed to. We also decided to have all of the stucco repainted. The landlord came over and attended to a few other minor things turned up by the home inspection, and my friend helped me put in a catwalk the home inspector thought we should have in the attic. I did some additional painting of the trim, and by the time we closed, the house was looking very good indeed.
We are both a little amazed by the whole experience. At each stage of the process, we felt we were just taking care of the business immediately at hand: putting the condo on the market, selling the condo, finding a rental house, hiring a mover, getting packed and unpacked, looking for a house to buy, and finally deciding to buy the rental house. We had a very general notion of what our desired outcome should be, although we did not have any specific plans for getting there. Nevertheless, the entire process worked out much more smoothly than we might have anticipated. We even managed to return to Virginia and pick up the rest of our stuff in August, combining a trip to Rehoboth Beach and to Washington, DC, with renting and loading a U-Haul truck to bring everything back to Texas. And now, not even a year later, we are enjoying our first Christmas in our new home. I suppose there has been some trauma along the way, but we are relieved now that we have done so much so quickly and with such relatively good results. For the first time in our marriage, we are genuine homeowners, and property owners with our own little bit of land in Texas.
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