We sold our house

Finally, we sold it. Not to a prospective house hunter, sadly. We took our safety net option and sold it to Cendant, our relocation company. Part of the relocation contract with NASA was the offer for them to buy our house if we couldn't sell it to anyone else.

Originally, we thought we wouldn't have any trouble selling our house. This was mid summer and the housing boom was booming away. When we first met our agent, we were hoping for a mild price increase of $60K over what we bought our house for. She suggested $140K, causing our jaws to hit the floor. Cool!

One reason we wanted to sell it to another buyer was that Cendant offers an incentive of 3% of the value on top of the sale price if we sell it to someone else. So we went to the trouble of updating the bathroom and keeping the house spotless until we moved.

However, we weren't getting many showings, so we dropped the price, then after a month, we dropped it again, to the appraised value. That was still a nice chunk of change, but disappointing after we thought we might get so much more.

Well, we waited and waited, but nothing. Bob told us that none of the other houses on the street have sold either. What's most frustrating though, is that 10 minutes away, townhomes are selling for $325K. Why buy a townhome for $100K more than a house, especially when the townhome is in an area that's getting horribly congested?

So Thursday we threw in the towel and sent off the paperwork to Cendant. While we won't make that $140K in profit we initially hoped for, we're still pretty happy. We might even be able to pay off our house here in Texas in full with the profits. Not bad for living in a place for three years.