Our trip to Colorado

We had a very busy trip to Colorado. We just returned and are really tired. We got a few things accomplished while we were there. First, WS had to have a medical exam before he could start work at his new job. He passed the exam ( I never thought that he wouldn't) and I was able to see where he will be working.


Additionally, we were able to meet with a real estate agent to look at a few homes in Centennial. This is a suburb South of Downtown that has fabulous schools. One of the school districts in Centennial is Cherry Creek. The reputation of this school district is a huge draw for us. It is supposed to be the best around. We also really like this area because it's family friendly and has everything that we could ever need/want. Also, it's very safe and just an ideal place. I took a few pictures to give an idea of what a typical street in Centennial is like.



We found that in Centennial the more established area of town is pricier and the homes are older (built in the 1970s and 1980s), but this part of Centennial is the more desirable area. The homes in this part of Centennial that are in our price range would require a little bit of updating. I'm not sure if this is what we want. However, the older part of Centennial is really better and seems closer to everything. WS really likes the older part of town. He found a house that he really likes in this area.

This house definitely has great curb appeal, but the inside really needs some updates. All of the carpet that is upstairs would need to be replaced and most of the rooms have floral wallpaper. I know that wallpaper is not easy to remove. We tend to be the ones to do the projects around the house. We don't hire out because it's cheaper for us to do it ourselves. However, it seems that if we want to be in the best part of Centennial, we will have to do some home projects.

The newer part of Centennial is farther East. This borders some areas of Aurora. Aurora has kind of a bad reputation in Colorado. I'm not sure why, but everyone says not to move there. Aurora is huge though. I don't think that people are talking about the part of Aurora that borders Centennial. I love the houses in this area because they're new, but the neighborhoods have much less character. The trees are not as mature and the yards are much smaller. I really don't mind this aspect. However, WS is concerned that his commute to work will be longer if we live that far East. I found a house that I liked out in this area of Centennial.

This house is only a few years old and is move in ready. That's what I like. It also has a finished basement that would be great for guests to stay in. Additionally, there are 5 bedrooms upstairs. You definitely get a lot more house for your money the farther East that you look in Centennial.

Although we're not ready to buy right now, it was great to be able to see what is out there in the area where we are most likely going to buy. We are not really considering Stapleton anymore. Although I like the idea of it, the schools are not what we are looking for. When we drove through Stapleton on Friday I began to realize that Stapleton is surrounded by some pretty seedy areas. Although Stapleton is safe, forget about walking outside of it. I don't think that we've totally ruled it out, but we're definitely leaning towards Centennial.

Off to Denver

WS and I are leaving tomorrow morning for a short trip to Denver. We were planning on finding a short term rental and accomplishing a few other things on our to do lists, but we might just be going out there for a visiting trip. We'll still look at rentals, but most likely WS will have to find a place just for himself to stay in until we can sell our place. He'll have to find a very cheap studio or 1 bedroom to live in. We'll still have our mortgage to pay for.

Although we are no longer looking to purchase a home within the next two months (unless there's a miracle with our place) we are still meeting with a real estate agent while we are in Denver. She's an expert in another area where we are very interested in living...Centennial. The problem with Centennial is that it is a pretty big place and we really want to get a feel for some of the different neighborhoods. The agent is going to take us around and show us some homes in our price range in some of the better neighborhoods in Centennial. We told her that our condo is no longer in escrow and that we're just going out to get a feel for the area. She's cool with that. I'm excited! I'll definitely take some pics that I can post.

Another reason that we're going to Denver is that WS has to have a medical exam before he can begin his new job. So, I'm going to get to see the hospital where he'll be working! I'm excited! Maybe I can meet some of his new coworkers. WS' last day of work was yesterday. He feels a little strange about it. He has worked at that job for over 12 years. He's definitely in transition now.

This weekend away will give us a chance to get away from all of the condo escrow business. It'll give our agent the chance to have an open house. She will be able to schedule showings of our unit without us being around. I'm really trying to think positively about our selling our place. It was a shock for me and then I was pretty upset. Now I'm just trying to get back into selling mode. I had no idea how emotional this was going to be. It wouldn't be this way if we were just selling our condo at our leisure. Who does that in this market though? I think that practically anyone who is selling right now is doing it because they have to.

Awful News

It really pains me to write this post...our condo fell out of escrow today. I still can't believe it. We have been in escrow since April 26th and we were all set to close on June 11th. Everything seemed to be going fine and really very normally. We had an appraiser come in, our inspection turned out fine, the buyers even brought in a contractor because they wanted to begin renovations right away. However, the buyers couldn't get the loan approved. This is so frustrating for me because they were pre-approved! How does that work? If you are pre-approved for a loan, doesn't that mean that you're PRE-APPROVED?! It doesn't make sense to me, but I guess that the buyer's income couldn't be properly verified. But isn't that part of the pre-approval? I don't really know, but I would assume that income would be a big part of the pre-approval process.

So...where does this leave us? We are basically a month behind now. We lost a month of showings. When you're on time constraints, every day counts. Additionally, our condo is no longer in showing condition. We are boxed up. WS has been boxing up our place for the last week. He's moving on the 10th. We have to be ready for his move. I strongly feel that the way that a home looks definitely makes a difference to potential buyers. I'm hoping that any future potential buyers will be able to look beyond the boxes, but who knows.

I'm trying to stay positive, but I'm so disappointed. I really didn't expect this. We'll just have to try to focus on selling once again. I hope that we have another offer soon. But for now, we're back on the market.

House Hunting

Searching for a house from out of state is a bit of a challenge, but it's surprisingly easier than ever. There are many useful websites that enable the user to feel almost as if he/she is actually viewing the home. Although we are going to wait to actually purchase a home until we are living in Colorado, I have been doing some searching online. I just want to see what's out there. I want to know what sort of homes are available in our price range and I want to know how quickly they're selling.

The first website that I use when I am searching an area of Denver is realtor.com. This website allows me to search an area for a home in a particular price range. I can choose from many different criteria -bedrooms, bathrooms, and even surrounding areas. Another listing website that I sometimes use is homefinder.com. Although I tend to use realtor.com more often, this website tends to have more listings. Also, I can find listings for foreclosures on this site. Not that we're going to buy a foreclosure! Once I find some listings that I am interested in, both of these sites allow me to create a list that I can revisit whenever I go back to the websites. This is helpful because I don't have to write down any of the listings that I like, they are just saved for me. Realtor.com also sends me e-mail updates if anything changes with the listings on my list (the price decreases, the agent posts more pictures, etc.).

Since I am not in Colorado to check out neighborhoods for listings that I like, I have found that Googlemaps is the best tool to look at the homes that I like and the surrounding neighborhoods. Once I find a listing that I like on one of the websites, I search for the address using googlemaps.com. I zoom in on the street level view so that I can see what the house and neighborhood looks like. I usually go down the street and into surrounding streets using the street level view of googlemaps. This tool has been invaluable. There have been some listings that look great from the pictures on realtor.com, but when I looked at the house and neighborhood using googlemaps, I realized that the neighborhood is not what we're looking for.

The other great feature that realtor.com has is that it provides school information for each listing. Whenever I find a listing that I like, I always look at the school information that is given. Realtor.com provides the elementary, middle and high school for each listing. It also gives the school's rating from greatschools.net and from parents. This saves me an extra step. I don't have to search for the schools for each listing and I don't have to find the ratings for each school. Schools are a very important factor for us.

Although these websites cannot duplicate viewing homes in person, they are the next best thing. These allow someone from out of state, like me, to get a good sense of the real estate in different neighborhoods.

Stapleton

We are taking our Colorado house hunting very seriously. At least I am. We initially wanted to buy a place right away. That is probably not going to happen. We would love it if we had a beautiful home to move right into, but it's really difficult to house hunt from another state. We have decided that there are two areas that we are really interested in living. One of the areas is a part of Denver called Stapleton.

Stapleton is actually a redevelopment of the old airport area. The website is very informative www.stapletondenver.com. The project seems to be a very well-planned community of new homes, lots of parks, and neighborhood stores. It's a sustainable community. The vision is that the residents will be able to walk to parks, stores, and really become a part of the community. There is lots of park space and even little "pocket parks" between homes. It seems to be a really mixed community with single family homes, lofts, high end apartments, and affordable housing.

WS visited Stapleton during his trip to Denver during April. He took some pictures.





Of course the parks are in winter mode and not very green, but I would imagine that it's much more green in late spring and summer. I definitely like many things about Stapleton.

1. It's a planned community. That's one of the things that I don't like about LA. Some areas are a jumble of things. The streets and housing are a mess. I like the idea that they planned Stapleton to be walker friendly, family friendly, and lots of green space.
   
2. Lots of parks and areas to be in nature. WS is a jogger. He jogs 3 days a week. When he jogs here, it's on the street. It will be nice for him to be able to jog in a park. There are so many in Stapleton. Also, it will be a big plus for E to have so many different areas for her to run around in. There is also a community garden, farmers market, a dog park, a creek, nature center, urban farm, and several community pools.
   
3. Community feel and family friendliness. That seems to be what it is known for.
   
4. Stapleton is close to WS' new job. Only about a 10 minute drive. Actually, Stapleton is pretty close to downtown Denver, too.
   
5. We can actually afford to buy a house! This could be the number one reason. Homes in Stapleton range in price from $100-200,000 for town homes to $300-very expensive for single family homes. The homes that are in our price range are really nice. Brand new homes that we can afford. In a nice neighborhood!!! I can't believe it. They even have a KB Home/Martha Stewart neighborhood in our price range! Love it.

There are a few things that we don't like about Stapleton:

1. We hear it's really crowded. There have been a few new stories that there are more people living in Stapleton than they planned for. The schools are especially crowded. Here is an interesting article from the Denver Post (www.denverpost.com/news/ci_13002375). Crowds are what we are trying to get away from.
2. The schools there are a part of DPS. I'm not sure if DPS (Denver Public Schools) is what we want for E. We want a school district with a great reputation. We want to be able to put her into a public school and then continue with public until she graduates.
   
3. The homes are smaller than in other areas that we are looking. The homes that are in our price range. They are still bigger than what we have now, but not as big as we are hoping for.
   

We are very interested in Stapleton. We are seriously considering renting a short term place there to try it out until we decide where we want to buy our house.

Moving companies

We had a great recommendation from my stepsister and her husband for a moving website. The site, www.uship.com, allows you to create a moving profile. We listed ourselves as a 2 bedroom condo, moving from LA to Denver. Based on our profile listing, different moving companies gave us bids. My stepsister had great results from this website, but the bids that we received were limited. We received 2 bids and the prices seemed kind of high.

We decided to just do our own research on the internet and call/email different moving companies. WS started with a call to PODS. PODS sounded ideal to us because they will store your items for you until you are ready to have them delivered. They drop off a large crate at your home, you have to pack it up, they pick it up and then deliver it when you're ready. PODS quoted us about $2,500. This price included storage for 30 days. That price was pretty reasonable, but WS and I would have to load the stuff ourselves. We didn't want to have to do that.

After discussing the situation, WS and I decided that a traditional moving company would be better for us. I looked at the websites for the well-known movers-Allied, Mayflower, and a few others. The problem that when I viewed outside websites that have service reviews ( www.epinions.com ) all of these companies had horrible reviews. I found a website devoted entirely to moving company reviews. This website, www.moverreviews.com, was a great help. Granted, I don't really know how reliable this website is, but I felt that I could get a better feel for companies. We looked at a few of the websites for the movers that had the best reviews. Some of the movers only serviced certain areas.

We eventually narrowed it down to two movers. America's Moving Services and Best Movers CA. We checked out their websites. They both seemed like great movers. WS called both companies. He was able to get in touch with Best Movers right away. He left a message for America's Moving and they called him back within 24 hours. He received quotes from both movers. America's Moving's quote was very reasonable, but Best Movers was even lower. WS also seemed to like the person that he spoke to from Best Movers. He was very helpful. Not that America's Moving wasn't, but WS just liked the information that he was given. It was a feeling that he had. So, Best Movers are our movers.

Selling our condo

Once WS knew for certain that he had the job in CO we decided to put our LA area condo on the market. This is an entirely new experience for me. WS bought this condo when we were still dating. I had no idea what was involved. There is a lot more to selling a home than I thought! Our realtor is very good at what she does. She's on top of everything! That has been a big plus for us.

I know that this market is tough for sellers. We looked at the price of condos in our area and we took into consideration what the last few units sold for before we decided on a price. We priced our condo about $10,000 cheaper than what our neighbors sold their identical unit for. They were one of the last to sell theirs. They had more updates than our condo and we wanted to bring in people to look. We figured that a low price would at least bring people in.

I think that one of the best tools for bringing in potential buyers was our realtor's internet virtual tour that she put together. It brought in potential buyers from the first day that she put it on the internet. In fact, our current buyer found her virtual tour and came in on the first day.

The worst part about having a home for sale is leaving for work in the morning. Our realtor wanted NO CLUTTER! We are very neat people, but she wanted nothing anywhere. We even took down E's art projects from our fridge. It took me extra time that I don't have to prep our house for showing every day. Our beds had to look like catalog beds. There could not be any paperwork on the kitchen counter. I had to put up decorative towels and put E's bathroom stuff away. I had to make sure that I didn't leave the five outfits that I tried on that morning on the bed. I usually leave the bed pretty messy when I rush out of the door in the morning. This was tough for me. I actually didn't have to do this every morning. I wasn't forced to, but I felt that it would help sell our place faster.

We actually had our first offer during the first week that it was on the market. The offer was horribly low. It was about $30,000 less than our listing price and they wanted us to pay all of their closing costs. I was upset because I felt that our price was low anyway. I didn't even want to consider it. We countered back $7,000 less than our asking price. They countered back $3,000 higher than their original offer. I told our realtor that I didn't want to participate in this back and forth stupidity any more. Then I became concerned. What if this was our only offer? We have a time line. WS' job begins on June 14.

Fortunately, a second offer came about a week later. It was $10,000 less than our listing price. We ended up countering and we are selling for only $4,500 below what we listed for. We are in escrow and we are set to close on June 10th. So far so good.

On a side note...the amount of paperwork that is involved in selling a home is so much! When we first met our realtor, she gave us a file folder organizer. She wasn't kidding. It seems like we just sign something and then there's something that we forgot or that she has to write up and send to the buyers. There are documents for everything! I had no idea. I can't wait to be done.

Why Colorado

We are moving to Colorado in about a month. Although we're excited (very, very excited) there is a lot to do! It's so different to move now than the last time I moved. Moving with an almost 4-year-old is very different than moving as a single person or even a couple. It's important to note that this is not a relocation. My husband (WS) is leaving a job at the medical center with the best reputation on the west coast for a new job at a University hospital in CO. However, he very willingly applied for the job in CO because he and I both have had a desire to move out of LA. We have felt very unhappy in LA for quite a while. The real deciding factor came during our summer vacation to Colorado. That trip convinced us that we had to move back there.

We loved living in LA before we had our daughter. There are great bars, restaurants, and so much to do. BUT everything changed when we had our daughter (E). The biggest problem that we have is housing. We live in a 2 bedroom condo. That was fine before E came along, but now we have no room. We are a typical middle class family and it's difficult for us to even consider buying a home in our area. I know housing prices have gone down since last year, but nice homes are still like $750,000 in the neighborhood where we live. There's no way that we could afford a home where we live. What about the suburbs? I actually really like some areas that surround LA. We have some friends in Simi Valley and in Santa Clarita. The commute would be way, way too much for us. WS is just not into it. He has to drive into Westwood every day. A major commute from anywhere. He doesn't want to spend hours in his car every day.

Schools in our neighborhood are your typical LAUSD schools. The elementary schools nearby our condo is not bad, but there is no way that I would send E to the public Jr High or High School. So, I had already made up my mind to send E to a local Catholic school when she was ready for Kinder. That is just another added expense.

Everything is more expensive in LA. When we have had family visit, they comment on how pricey everything is compared to CO. Likewise, when we visited CO last summer it was noticeable.

Traffic is a nightmare in LA. There is traffic all of the time. Weekends and weekdays. ALL THE TIME. I'm so tired of it. It takes 3 hours to drive down to see friends in Orange County. That's not right. It also seems like its getting worse.

Our summer trip to CO really pushed us to the point of making it happen. We realized that we could live a better life. We could actually buy a house. We were both convinced without much convincing. When we returned to LA we decided that it was something to pursue. And here we are. It seems that it was meant to be. There was a job opening for WS and he was hired. That part worked out so well.

Our CO pros and cons lists:

CO Pros

1. We can afford a house, not just a condo.
2. Not as much traffic as LA.
   
3. Job market is better for teachers. I hear it's still tough, but not as bad as California. Getting a teaching job is impossible here.
   
4. E can go to a public school.
   
5. WS has family (parents and sisters) in CO.
6. Better skiing (that's a pro for WS).
   

CO Cons

1. There is no beach.
2. My family doesn't live there.
3. Less diversity of population.
4. No Trader Joe's
5. Snow in the wintertime.
   

For us the decision was not difficult. We both feel completely certain that we want to live there again. WS grew up there and I spent 2 years of college in Boulder. Now we just need to figure out what we're doing!