There Is A Lot To Selling A House!! Part Two

A week ago we spent four grueling hours doing our Disclosure Statement for the house sale. Eleven long pages of every imaginable question on the house history for repairs, problems, improvements, use, neighborhood and in our case, since the house is actually designated a condo, the Declaration of Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions (CC&R’s). We exhausted ourselves from having to think so much and for crossing our T’s and dotting our I’s as we didn’t want to leave anything out. After 20 years of Glenn owning the house there was a lot to go back over and explain. We eventually got it done though and Glenn finally ate dinner at 10pm! Anyone who knows him knows what a bear he gets when he doesn’t have food. For me it is no problem as I rarely get hungry, so I kind of forget what is happening to his body until too late. Once he gets something in him though, his sweet disposition comes back. I hear his dad was the same way and his mom always had to bring snacks for him. I may have to start doing that too. 

Since then we have been over to the house a number of times, seeing progress each time. There is new carpeting and paint in the downstairs apartment, so that looks great. The kitchen island has also been sanded and the work in the bathroom has been completed. The granite countertop in the kitchen is installed and a new partially glass door for the entry is done.

Upstairs didn’t need much work. There is new paint in the living room and entry which we really love. It ties the house together in a way the white we had before didn’t. We are putting some new updated lighting in the ceiling of the two bedrooms and dining room and going over the electrical wiring for the whole house. The outside has been touched up where needed, there is new dark eggplant paint color on the front steps and they are putting some additional plants in the front. Once all of this is finished the only thing left will be the cleaning and staging. We can’t wait to see what they come up with for that.

Christian Klugmann did our before photography and will do the final photos. He is great for architectural photography so we know he will show our house well. He is from Berlin and we had a good time talking to him when he came out to take the initial photos.  Just the other day he came to Albany and had lunch with us on Solano, so we know we will keep in touch.

Our real estate agent Cheryl Berger is doing a fantastic job and is working hard for us. She has made the process easy so far and gets back to us right away when we have questions or need an update. She also had us write out a letter to perspective buyers about what the house has means to us and all of the improvements etc. that have been done, which we think will be a nice touch. The “coming soon” sign goes up sometime this week and everything is going to go fast from there. The open houses are on Saturday the 24th and Sunday the 25th of February and the 4th of March. We hope we get a lot of potential buyers of course, and think we will do really well since our Temescal neighborhood in Oakland is so popular. All we can really do now is wait and see and let everyone do their jobs.