What’s New with the House?

Well, I’d much rather this post be titled, “We Sold the House” but that post will have to wait for a bit longer. We have had steady interest in our house – it has shown over 60 times since it went on the market nearly a year ago. According to our realtor, that is a very good number. Unfortunately, none of the interest in looking at the house has turned into an interest in making a realistic offer on the house. We have had one offer that was so low we couldn’t afford to accept it, another verbal offer that was lower than that, and a lease-option offer that was rescinded within 24 hours.

After much thought, deliberation, and prayer, we have decided to hire a contractor to do some sprucing-up at the house. Of all the feedback we’ve received on the house thus far, we have consistently heard that it requires too much work. So, we’ve decided to do some of that work and hope that it’s enough to entice someone to make an offer.

The other story with the house is that we saw a 2000% increase in our electricity bill in January. We went from using 4-6 KWH per day to using 80 KWH per day. Since the house is vacant and we only have a few lights on, we couldn’t figure out why we would be using that much energy. (Ernie came up with a great scenario – that one of our neighbors was using an extension cord plugged into our exterior outlet to run their marijuana growing operation. The real story wasn’t nearly so exciting.) It turns out that when a previous owner replaced the original electric baseboard heat with a natural gas furnace, the wiring wasn’t disconnected properly. We think that someone who looked at the house turned the knobs on the thermostats in the house, kicking on the power. Once the breakers for the electric baseboard heat were flipped off, the power usage has returned to the low normal of 4-6 KWH per day.

Please pray with us that there will be a new post very soon entitled "We Sold the House!"