The Home Sale Inspection

It comes as quite a shock when you get the home inspection report on the house you thought you were doing such a good job of keeping up.  Oh sure, some of it is knit-picky stuff that no one would look for or repair – like replacing rusted nails in exterior window trim.  But some of it kind of hits you with a why didn’t I notice that surprise.  Really, the hand rail on the back steps is loose?  How did I not know that?  And then there are the things that have been there the whole 10 years we have owned the house.  Yes, there is some water that seeps out of the shower in the master bathroom and is discoloring the baseboard trim.  It hasn’t gotten any worse or better in 10 years.  We re-did caulking; we resealed the door; we put on new water-proof trim at the bottom of the door.  None of it had any effect.  So now I guess we are just oblivious to it.  So yes, I understand you either have to fix some things or give an additional concession on the price.  Perfectly understandable.  In our case, the buyer really only wants a price concession since her plan is to do an extensive interior remodel anyway.

But then, on the inspection report we got back from the buyer is this completely baffling issue.  The report says the downstairs HVAC does not work.  We need a new unit.  What????  It’s working just fine.  What are you talking about?  We even have a service contract on it and it was completely inspected two weeks before the home inspection.  Clean bill of health.  Part of the buyer’s proposed price reduction is related to HVAC.  But wait, the HVAC works.  We submit our clean bill of health paperwork dated two weeks earlier to the buyer.  We offer to get the service company back out to re-certify that the HVAC works.  No, the buyer, who we graciously let come to the house multiple times so her contractors could measure and estimate for the re-model, says the system wouldn’t work any of the times she was there.  What????  I’m sitting here now and the unit is on, keeping everything toasty.  As for our service contract inspection report she dismisses it.  That company “owns” the area, she says.  What?  How is that relevant?

So the buyer will split the HVAC cost with us.  That’s her “concession” after already refusing to negotiate on the cost of any of the other work.  So the final decision is in our court.  Do we accept what is seeming to be a very unreasonable price reduction and start over or accept it and move on?  Can we get a better deal with a new and different buyer, I ask our agent?  Well, maybe not, he says.  What if we put the house back on the market?  Well, he says, agents talk….  What?  He elaborates - the real estate agents in this area all know each other and they talk.  If an agent brought a client through before and wasn’t wowed by the house, they tell other agents not to bother showing the property.  Now this really floored me.  I’m from Los Angeles.  There are thousands of agents and, of course, they don’t all know each other.  But then I remember I am in Nashville.  And in one of those enclaves of Nashville where most everyone went to grade school together, often at the same grade school their parents attended.  Okay, game over.  We’ll give the buyer a price concession.

Moving

Retirement, like marriage, job changes, and having a child, is a life changing event.  Big changes are inherently stressful even if you are excited by the upcoming experience.  And in the months leading up to actually setting a retirement date I had those moments of fear and doubt that should probably be expected.  I’m sure I’ll have more anxiety on the retirement change in the coming weeks, but another major change known to cause stress is moving and right now that is the one that is consuming my mind.

It felt like a big step forward to have lined up our housing for the time between the closing of the sale of our current house and the last days we need to be in the office before retirement.  And obviously that was an important thing to get done and I felt great when it was accomplished.  But now each morning, as I’m getting ready for work, I look at all the stuff that fills a 3,600 square foot house and think “how are we going to get all of this packed”, “how are we going to get all of this moved”.  Obviously we have already planned on a lot of downsizing – I can walk through rooms waving my arm over lots of furniture we aren’t going to take.  But there are drawers and cabinets and closets to be dealt with.  And I am a collector – I have numerous pieces of lovingly acquired American Brilliant Cut Glass; I have a Department 56 Christmas Village and a Halloween Village.  I am a crafter with storage bins of yarn and fabric and patterns, a sewing machine, a serger, and an embroidery machine.  Oh, and a random bin of crewel embroidery and counted cross stitch.

And my husband, Chuck, has five guitars? Six?; lots of vinyl record albums; books.

We’re both making decisions to shed all sorts of stuff.  But some days getting the stuff we are keeping packed and moved, while still going to work everyday, seems daunting.  Our move to Nashville from California was a corporate relocation so we had next to nothing to do.  Our most recent move before that was a for a distance of about 15 miles and although we did our own packing there was lots of stuff we could just run over of an evening since we had access to the new house some weeks before we moved out of our old house.  Getting stuff ready to travel 300 miles……..I’m tired just thinking about it.

Our Country Club Housing

I have to say that finding our temporary housing was much simpler and easier than I expected.  Having narrowed down the Airbnb offerings to those that would allow pets, I focused on location.  I currently get up at 4:30 am to do a 4 mile run each morning (I won’t miss the 4:30 am alarm in retirement, let me tell you!!).  

So I wanted a property that would be on or near streets that have streetlights.  A lot of properties in the Nashville-adjacent areas don’t have streetlights, something I still find quite odd after living here for ten years. So I went with properties within Nashville Metro and then eliminated the rentals that were in downtown condominium buildings and the ones that were in high-density apartment complexes.  No need to take a risk that the dogs will turn into incessant barkers in an environment like that.  That left me two promising options.  I messaged the host whose picture included her dog and got an enthusiastic response about accepting our dogs.  So we have a place to stay in May!!!!  And with a Belle Meade address.  Maybe I can do my runs around the Country Club J

Now we can move to Step Two – downsizing.  

Step One - Sell House. Done.

For us the first step on the journey to retirement, well first after telling our employers and co-workers that is, was selling our house in Nashville.  Nashville is currently considered to be a pretty “hot” market for real estate and our house is in a well-established, close-in (read “desirable”) neighborhood.

 

It sold in two weeks, which was a bit faster than we had expected.  We have 44 days to be out of the house.  But 83 days until the date we told our employers we would be out of their houses.  So now we are faced with three projects – downsizing, packing the things we are going to keep, and finding a place to live for the 39 days we will need to be in Nashville before decamping to North Carolina.   I fear we may have bitten off more than we can chew, but there is no going back now.  The offer we accepted on the house was a fair offer with no contingencies and no requests for us to upgrade anything.  Turns out the buyer is planning on gutting a lot of the inside (??? The house is only 11 years old.  Whatever.) 

I’ve been checking out the properties on Airbnb as a possible solution for our gap housing needs.  One of the big issues, wherever we try to stay, is going to be our two dogs, Jasmine and Freddy.

Jasmine

Freddy

Somehow I’m not much of a fan of small dogs, so our two are a 72 pound Rottweiler and a 45 pound German Short-haired Pointer . Turns out on Airbnb you can filter for “Pets Allowed”.  That’s a good starting point.  That filter alone took the available properties down by about 90%.  So now to do a little messaging with the “hosts” of some likely properties.

3 Months 8 Days

So my retirement countdown app tells me I have 3 months and 8 days left as an employee.  The last 14 days of that time will be paid vacation so it is really 2 months and 26 days.  Other than a 3 week period of unemployment something like 35 years ago, I have been continuously employed for 38 years.  And the refrain that runs through my mind as I think about retirement is from the Kaiser Chiefs’ song “Retirement” – “I want to retire, No longer required”.  It’s probably that “no longer required” part that scares me.  No rhythm and routine to be adhered to, because that is part of “being required”.  And “being required”, while it implies a burden of doing what someone else directs, also implies being needed, being relevant.  I certainly want to continue to be relevant! 

                                          Me and My Husband with our Grand-daughter at Sea World

So I embark on the journey from being relevant because of what my skillset is worth to an employer to becoming relevant because of what I do with my “free” time.  Where am I as I start the journey?  Well, I am 62 years old and have been married to my best friend for a few months shy of 43 years.  He and I are entering retirement at the same time.  I am mother to one child, a daughter, and have two adorable grandchildren, a boy and a girl.  I am a California native, now living in Tennessee, but with a retirement home waiting in the mountains of western North Carolina.  I am a Certified Public Accountant with a Master of Science in Taxation, who has mainly worked in corporate tax departments.  I am retiring from a role in which I manage a team of ten in filing corporate tax returns, defending the returns on audit, and recording the financial impact of taxes in the corporate books.  I have been doing handcrafts for most of my life and look forward to all the projects I want to complete with more free time.  My husband and I love to hike and cook and occasionally travel.  When we travel we come up with our own itinerary and enjoy the immersive experience of taking public transportation and walking a city.  We enjoy small get-togethers with friends and family but are not super social.  Being best friends for all these years we can be quite content just being together.  And in 2 months and 26 days I will start becoming…?  He will start becoming…?