As we prepare to move again, I thought now would be a good time to write about all that is involved. Having the military move you is different than if you were to do it yourself. We've done both, and each have definite advantages and disadvantages!
Since this time is a military move, I'm just going to be focusing on that.
So, the first thing we need is a posting message. This is the magical message that comes from the military, usually in the form of an email. This document tells us that we are, in fact, moving and where to. Once we have that, we can proceed with selling our house.
This year, we received a late posting message. Normally we would know that we will be moving by about December, and patiently wait until sometime in March or April for a message. We got ours in May, the same week a position came up for Corey. It was fast. A position came up, we agreed and we had the official message within the same week.
The next step was to contact our real estate agent here and let him know we would need to sell the house. Lots of paperwork followed this, along with an appraisal of the house, and of course, photos for the MLS listing. I wanted the house show-ready for the photos that would be going online to accompany our MLS listing, as well as for the appraisal, and it took a bit of work to get it there.
We put our house up for sale on 26 May 2016. It was listed on the MLS early that Thursday morning. We had spend the previous weekend (May long weekend) cleaning, doing minor repairs and paint touch-ups, knowing we would be listing it that week. It took a bit of time to research & compare similar houses and agree on a selling price. Our agent also had to take interior and exterior photos of the house, edit them, and write up a blurb about the house. He also needed information from us, such as the previous years tax info.
We had a viewing scheduled before our house was even an active listing. Our agent had potential buyers, so he showed the house on Wed. evening. They liked it, but not the size of the kitchen (I agree, it's a bit too small for the size of the house), and they didn't like that we hadn't watered our lawn. Oh well. Grass is greener just up the street for 50K more! Literally. Our neighbours all take amazing care of their lawns and it shows.
We had a viewing set for the Sunday. I didn't feel like they would buy, and that turned out to be right.
Monday an interesting thing happened. I was just getting Max ready for a nap, when the doorbell rang. An agent was on my doorstep, with a potential buyer in tow. The story continues in Moving- Military Style- Part 2
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