This afternoon we got a call from Joannie Franz. She, Shelly and Caroline who were headed back to Cooper’s and they wanted to stop at our place.

We had a great visit.

It was so nice to have some of our Florida friends in our house. I can’t remember when we’ve had any guests.

They were very complimentary about our place. And, since they know we want to sell our place, they had excellent suggestions.

For example, we’d been thinking we need to “fix up our house” but they suggested that instead we set a price and offer a reduction by xxx dollars equal to what we think would help with a “remodel.” That way the buyer can buy (and feel they’ve gotten a deal) and the remodel would suit their tastes.

Shelly, who sold her place last year, suggested that set it up for sale before we leave in October (2017) and we list it for April 2018.

Someone also suggested that we hire an estate sale business rather than having a “garage” sale. Caroline said, “Hire someone to do the work, don’t do it yourself.”

I mentioned we need to scrub dow the kitchen and she said, “Have it done by a cleaning service.”

So we came away with lots of good ideas.

As they left, they said they think our place, with it’s view, will sell quickly.

I was ready to try to prep it before we head south, but logically I realize we have a lot of clutter to get rid of. I don’t think we can do it by our departure on October 6th. ( days until we leave for Florida.) So maybe we’ll get the realtor to come to our house and look over things so we’ll know what we need to eliminate/change. Then we’ll start on that list, but finish next year when we get back. We’ll try to have it ready to sell by April 2019.

This year, we can take the suggestions of the realtor and work on them. We’ll check out the hottub to see if it still works, and purge as much as we can. Maybe we’ll hire a contractor to put the drywall back up in the basement so it doesn’t look like we had a flood.

Some precious stuff we’ll take with us to Florida in October (especially my harp that John built). I’ll try to sell some craft items on eBay, and we’ll deal with the rest next year.