Time to count the good stuff

I was overwrought today.

We spent 3 days pulling weeds, washing windows, packing clutter, planting flowers, touching up paint, dusting, burning, mowing, cleaning like fiends for the open house we had today.

I might mention, we do not live in a dump. But as we were out looking for houses, most of them smaller than ours, not necessarily in better neighborhoods and typically less cool than our, also were listed for up to 70K more than what we are selling for.

This isn't new. We know this community is full of cracksmokers where the prices of their homes are concerned. We think it is because of a slowing of development in the area, hence a temporary cap on new homes and so the residents seem to think that 300K for a 1400 square foot home that is everything average is suitable. We aren't looking in SanFrancisco, this is a bedroom community of Portland Oregon. These people are smoking crack.

The prices are starting to come down I think because the houses aren't selling in this slow market, but still. When you are in a house that is just fine except for the total whitewashing of every piece of wood in the place, and the fine plush royal blue carpet, after 6 months of keeping on, I just started to get down. A fine neighborhood, barring the barbed wire over the top of the fence to keep out fairgoers that will border us once a year. The house was priced nearly 60K above ours, was about 300 square feet smaller, and didn't have nice stuff we have now, like wood, and built ins and hardwoods. I felt myself wanting to escape.

We looked at many houses like this one. Did I tell you our realtor has told us we are listed too high? She hasn't generated any comps because I think she has given up on us. J is having a hard time lowering a price when less than 10 people have looked at the place in 6 months, although ultimately, we know we will need to do so.

Our realtor is amazing. She doesn't help us with any information about any of the areas we are looking at. She doesn't send us houses to look at, she doesn't even call us. It is my humble opinion she is afraid of the people looking at the house. One of the people she showed to was an immigrant from (gasp!) Africa. This is par for us. I am an ESL teacher, I work with these kids, know how cool they are, but she is from milktoastland apparently where no one has any color in their skin unless it is from a spray on tan. She expressed concern about this man, that she was a little uncomfortable.

Huh.

Now we never hear from her, the most she has done to augment or help us is put "Sellers Motivated!" on our internet listing which I wish she would take off. After dealing with 10 or 20 of her "oops!" situations, the decision is that she is just not the brightest bulbl on the christmas tree, and I personally think she is afraid of immigrants.

Today, after looking at myriad crappy houses that were smaller but "in our price range" (read: up to 40K above our current home price) and just generally getting queasy at the prospect of living in these homes, our stellar real estate representative told us that not a single person came to our open house. We began to wonder if she had advertised it at all or put out a single sign.

We know the market is the slowest it has been for 20 some years. This didn't stop me from feeling nauseas for the rest of the day and realizing that I had to go back to square one and be glad for what I do have.

We are moving because J is commuting 4 hours a day to work. I got a new job, a little closer to his, but not too far away from Portland because his job has almost no stability of funding. If he gets another job, it will be in Portland area. But now if we don't sell and move, we will both be commuting a loooong way.

So now I am going to compile some photo album stuff because it always reminds me that there are lots of good things in my life outside of our very sorry excuse for a real estate agent.

Now we get to decide whether we are going to go FSBO or with a full service broker. Any opinions?