SOLD!

I figured that would have a few posts between the for sale post and a sold post, but I was wrong. We received an offer on our place on Monday morning and by Monday around 9pm, we were officially future suburbanites.

Six days on the listing, the first person through the open house on Saturday, an offer and a sale. That's how easy it is I guess. I know that we were really lucky, so we will just say all the cards fell the right way at the right time.

One of our stipulations of sale was a fairly quick close. The buyer really wanted to close at the end of May, but during the negotiation, we got it pushed back to June 19th. So, come late June, we will not be living in the city. It is bittersweet as we have loved our 8-9 years living in Chicago. We will be sad to leave all that it offers behind, but we know we will be a short drive or train ride away.

Because we are both accountants, we understood the financial aspects of the sale enough to tell the buyer that if all things fall into place, we will actually close on May 29 if he still wants to. We did this because we were not sure we would find a place of our own to close on before June 19th - therefore, when the time comes, we can make that decision and tell our buyer that we will close on May 29 and save the 19 days of mortgage payment in June. (Just trust me - it all works in our favor - and we got him to think we were making a concession for him so that he would give us more of what we wanted - $$$.)

So, we could be gone as early as Memorial Day.

The search now begins to find a house - and a suburb. We are looking for a nice burb that has a true downtown area. We will want to live near this downtown area - which we think will make the transition easier as it will be somewhat like what we are used to. This will include a walkable distance to the downtown area and train station. We will obviously love to be very near a park, but one walkable will suffice. We are torn on the distance from the city as it will determine Ali's work status. She likes what she is doing so she would like to work, so we have moved our search to burbs closer to downtown. The type of house is negotiable, it can be 3 or 4 beds with varying bathrooms, new or old, whatever. Right now the locations are Geneva, Glen Ellyn, maybe Deerfield, possibly Naperville. Who knows. It just depends on what we find. I just hope we can find a good agent (ha ha.) Ali's mom will be acting as our agent. We will start our search on Friday.


On another note, we will post a story and pictures from Harper's wedding in San Diego shortly. Obviously other things have taken up our time the last few nights.