Downsizing and Selling My House
I finally closed on my house sale on Friday, January 24,
2020, and the proceeds were wired to my bank.
I sold the house for less than I would have liked, and it took nearly 7
months, somewhat longer that I originally expected.
After talking about it for several years, I finally decided
to downsize in early 2019, sell my house and move to an active senior
community. I had been living in my house
for 37 years, since 1982, through divorce, eventual remarriage and a house fire
in 2001. I had been living alone in the
pretty large house since 2007, when my wife Gisela died. It really was a waste of space on a property
that had increased in value through the years.
The real estate market in Dallas seemed to be quite active at the time,
houses like mine were selling for upwards of $400k, and being sold within a
month. Not so when I listed my
house. Literally nothing in my
competitive neighborhood was hardly selling at all. I sat on the house and paid nominal bills on
it for seven months.
Like many my age and status in life, I had accumulated an
8-room house full of furniture and other belongings. This included a rather extensive firearms and
loading collection from my sport of high-power accuracy rifle shooting, a
pickup truck, a garage and shed full of tools, a 10-foot satellite antenna, and
various and sundry artifacts that I had collected from domestic and foreign
travel through the years I also
suspected that the house had developed slab and possibly other integrity issues
since the last time that this had been addressed in the mid 1980’s. The house also required relatively minor
indoor and outside repairs and paint. Because
of all of the above issues, I thought that downsizing, selling the house and
moving out was not a trivial matter.
I started the process in late February of 2019 by talking to
the management of Lakeview, a senior community in Carrollton, Texas, where
several church friends already lived.
Lakeview was my original target senior community. From them I obtained references for a real estate
broker, Tricia Spurrier of Keller Williams Agency, and a downsizer, Kim
Lawrence of Seasoned Life Transitions, her own company. I also started accumulating references for
slab work and for other relatively minor maintenance that the house required.
I first met with Tricia Spurrier in February of 2019 to
discuss specific things that I needed to do to get the house ready for sale, listing
the house and timing. We agreed to early
summer as a target date for selling the house since that was an advantageous
time for family buyers. I also met with
Kim Lawrence about downsizing and holding an estate sale, and worked out some
preliminaries. I started making
arrangements for any slab work and other repairs necessary, and gave some
thought to selling my firearms and other equipment. I started acting as a project manager again,
as I had when we reconstructed the house after the house fire in 2001.
Integrity Foundation of Fort Worth tested and levelled the
slab in March, only about an average of 1” at a total cost, of $4050, including
later testing. The testing showed that
the water lines passed the required Dallas City tests, but the sewer lines did
not. This necessitated a major revamp of
the sewer lines. After several competitive
bids, I chose C & C Slab of Dallas to do this work. Their “tunnel rats” tunneled under the house
from both ends and completely replaced the sewer system, at a cost of close to
$20,000. They finished this work in late
April, taking a full month, after being interrupted several times by major
rainstorms. This constituted the major
expenditure in getting the property ready for sale.
In the meantime, I got a contractor friend of mine Billy
Fritcher, to do some ceiling and Pergo floor repairs, some interior painting,
some external cosmetic work on the house and some fence repair. Billy also removed and scrapped the 10 ft
satellite dish in my back yard. Billy
only charged me less than $1000 for all of this work.
Kim Lawrence and I started on the downsizing effort at about
the same time – late April or early May.
I thought that this would be daunting, because I had an awful lot of
“stuff”, but Kim had “been there and done that” before and assured me that it
need not be that daunting. Kim and I
worked for the good part of a month sorting, choosing and packing. Kim was invaluable in this downsizing
effort. Her experience figured heavily
in what I was to take with me, what was for the estate sale, and what needed to
be donated or disposed of. This was a pretty
traumatic time for me, because I had to get off my ass and act, rather than
just talking and planning.
I eventually also had to pay to haul off perfectly good
“stuff” just to get rid of the volume.
Further discussions with the Riverview Senior Community
staff and several visits to the facility turned my opinion away from them, in
spite of the fact that several of my church friends were living there. Their price for what I considered a too small
two-bedroom apartment was nearly $4000 per month with a rather inflexible meal
plan. They stressed a pre-payment to
defray monthly costs, and they seemed inflexible in other ways. They also seemed to have considerable staff
turnover. Their Executive Director and
their Head Chef changed as I was negotiating with them. They also had a main elevator problem, and
seemed not to honor the Second Amendment.
With Kim Lawrence’s help, I looked at several other senior
retirement communities. Everleigh was a
beautiful brand-new facility at Forest and Inwood, just south of St Marks
Preparatory School. It was upscale,
expensive and was just opening. Rooms
were a little small, and the place was so modern, that my regular old furniture
would be out of place. Meadowstone
Place, which I finally chose, was an older community, but it was spacious, the
staff was quite professional, and they offered over one month rent and other
amenities as a signing bonus. I actually
had access to the new apartment at 10308 Stone Canyon Road, Apt 201s on May 24,
and I prepared to setup TV, phone and internet service in the new place.
My old Caltex friend, John Penzenik, worked for Cabela’s Gun
Library in the past, and gave me a contact there to sell off my firearms and
equipment. After several weeks of
telephone tag, I finally got in touch with Curt Junker, Cabela’s Regional
Acquisition Manager. To make a long
story short, Curt gave me a fair price for most of my guns. We held several higher priced guns back as
inducement for the estate sale, and we also sold those at decent prices. I kept back a little Belgian Browning in
.380, and a Glock 17 in 9 mm. I cleared
about $10k on the guns that I estimated were worth about $15k retail.
I committed to move from the house at 3247 to Meadowstone
Place on June 10, and Kim and I worked to prepare for that target date. On Sunday, June 9, there was a major wind
storm that knocked out power both at 3247 Whitehall, and Meadowstone
Place. A tree fell on the landing outside
of my new apartment, and it was touch and go whether I could actually move in
on June 10. I had scheduled John
Fortunato, the mover for that date.
Fortunately, the Meadowstone maintenance cleared the tree limb and we
proceeded as scheduled. I paid John
Fortunato $3700 for moving and setting up my “stuff” at 10308. Kim also was invaluable in this effort.
I sold my 1992 Toyota pickup for $3500 by listing it on
Facebook after having my mechanic, Reuben, go through it and prepare it for
sale. I literally had a bidding war
going for the truck, and I sold it for $500 more than I really needed to get
out of it.
Kim Lawrence held the estate sale the following weekend and
we cleared about $8500, with about $3000 as my portion, plus another $9000 from
sales of the guns. Kim then continued to
sell off some of the items that were left over the next several months until
most items were gone. I cleared another
roughly $500 from these sales.
Working with Tricia Spurrier of Keller-Williams, we listed
the house in mid-June for $365,000, which was considered competitive at the
time. Earlier in the year houses in this
area were turning over fairly rapidly, but it seems that as soon as we listed
the house, the competitive market dried up, and no one was selling. We had our share of viewings and a few
low-ball offers, but other than that I continued to pay for insurance and
minimal utilities on the house. We
lowered our listing, first to $360,000, and then to $350,000, but did not
elicit any realistic offers. Comments
were that the house was not modern enough for the several interested buyers.
I went to Vienna and the Balkans in September, and to Massachusetts
in December, all the while keeping an eye on the house sale. It almost sold while I was in Massachusetts
at around $309,000, but the buyer backed out at the last minute. We got an offer from a developer of $281,000
that they later raised to $290,000. I
decided to accept this offer, because this was a cash deal, as is, with no
option period and with no 3% buyer’s commission. It’s as if it was a conventional sale at
about $310,000.
After clearing up a title issue that still showed joint
ownership of the house with my deceased wife Gisela, the closing took 15
minutes at my place, and the money was wired into my account the same day. The buyer even let me leave my junk remnants
in the garage and house. Also there was
a buyer’s “construction set-aside” of $59,300, which apparently the buyer is
going to use to completely modernize the house before “flipping” it, thereby
preserving the integrity of the neighborhood.
To put a period on it, I met with my Tom Adcock, my
Financial Planner for lunch On January 28th.
I decided to take advantage of the “Trump Bump”, and invest in roughly
50% equities and 50% bond based ETF’s.
The equities are to be a mixture of mutual funds and ETF’s under Tom’s
supervision. I also decide to buy $10k
of Boeing stock, which is a bargain right now.
Tom transferred the funds into my LPL account using his laptop while we
were sitting at lunch.
Ray Gruszecki
January 28, 2020
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