Wilamar Farm: Back In Roseburg

I'm back. I think...

So here's what happened. As you all know I was working in Bend, about a 55 minute drive away. When the roads were snowy and icy it was closer to an hour and a half one way. Being older, overweight, and fairly inactive, being on my feet for eight hours a day took a toll. I would drive home and then hobble from my car to the sofa to put my feet up.

Once home, depending on what shift I was working, I didn't feel like doing anything but recouping on the sofa. I know my husband was frustrated because he was home alone all day, and then he would want to do things and go places with me on my days off and I really didn't want to.

But because of various circumstances, not working was not an option. I thought originally I'd have to work for about two years but things only got worse and I could see me working for a long, long time and that was making me increasingly unhappy.

Don't get me wrong... I really did enjoy my job at THD (most of the time), especially once I got promoted to Paint Associate. But it wasn't how we had planned our life would be when we bought the Prineville house.

One day I was fooling around on the internet and clicked on Zillow to see if our house zestimate had increased since we bought it. I was quite shocked to see the zestimate had gone up by about $400,000! I know the zestimates aren't always accurate but still... It got the wheels turning.

I did a little more research and contacted a highly rated local realtor to see if she would give us a more realistic estimate on our home's value. Long story short, she did come out and gave us a starting sale price of about $200,000 more than what we bought the house for. So much better news than when we sold our Bakersfield house, basically for nothing.

We listed our house in September 2014. I was a little nervous because I was really familiar with the Douglas County real estate and I would see properties in that area, in that price range that hadn't sold, in some cases were still for sale four years later.

We had a couple of showings and everybody loved it. I mean, after all, the house was an extremely well built home with a fabulous, unbeatable view. We thought at one point we were going to get an offer until they couldn't produce a financial proof letter. Then about four months after listing we had another showing (different people) and got a very positive feedback. About a week later we got an offer.

The bad news was the offer was for $75,000 below list price! I was very disappointed but I wasn't ready to throw in the towel. Since we were told from the beginning that this was an all-cash offer I knew they would have to have close to what our list price was. I got my calculator out and started making lists of different sale prices and what we would get after realtor fees, closing fees, etc. I knew how much cash I wanted to get out of the sale and I was willing to wait if I needed to. The other thing in our favor was I knew these people were from out of state and were in a hurry to find a place. A previous offer they had made on another house fell through after a bad inspection.

We countered at $10K below list and received another counter offer, this time $50K below list. That still was not good enough for me. Our realtor suggested figuring out our lowest offer and re-counter with that. I took out my list and told her my lowest possible acceptable price. They once again countered that and we just sent our previous counter back. They accepted. It was $25,000 below list price but I was going to get the cash I felt I needed for the move back to Roseburg.

All went well until our home inspection. Turns out there was something wrong with our heat pump and we never even knew it! We ended up having to put a new unit in to the tune of $3,000. Once that was taken care of we contacted movers to get estimates (ouch!!!), started packing and looking for a place for the animals. I got rid of the chickens in one day by listing them on Craig's List for free. Finding a place for the bull and two horses was a little more difficult. I finally found a place in Redmond that took the horses and didn't cost me an arm and a leg. And not until virtually the last moment did I find a place for our bull.

We have friends in Washington State that have a farm and they generously offered to take Dakota. By then time was getting very short because I feel like I have to do everything properly. He had to have a sexually transmitted disease test (took a week to complete), get his health certificate and brand inspection. We finally got everything done and I made the long drive up and back. Thank goodness they loaned me an extra GPS because driving through Portland nearly got me undone!

SOOOOO.... we sold our Prineville house and are back in Roseburg in a rental. I got all but one credit card paid off so that is a huge relief. We found a really nice place that both of us agreed to and put an offer in. After a couple of counter offers they accepted. Our closing should be in August and so far the inspections have come back good. We aren't quite locked in just yet but it's really close.

I'm glad it didn't take us a year like the last time...

We have been taking little day trips like we used to and I started bringing the camera again, so I'm hoping to be able to start blogging again. Maybe not every day, but every so often.

Here are some pictures of our rental.

The neighbor's tree (he doesn't know what it is).