On the edge of salvation...

...but never quite crossing it.

I've written several posts about how This New Thing will surely be what bails us out of the great, big, money sucking hole that is our condo, but I gave up hope on that over the holidays. We're screwed, basically. Losing the condo will basically be a God-send. Sure, we'll take a huge credit hit even if we end up doing a short sale, but at least we'll have enough money to get by, pay down the debt we've accrued here, and maybe even be able to feed the baby.

But every time I hit the troughs after the peaks of hope, something like the following comes along. I'm not going to hype it--at all--but I log it here as just one more piece of our apparently endless house real estate drama.

A little background: Grace, my wife, has been the editor-in-chief of a small newsletter. (I've written about it before). It's starting to take off. It's popular among local investors and wanna-bes, but so far advertisers have yet to materialize. That's a big problem because while it's not an expensive thing to print (relatively speaking), it only merits her time if it starts making money. Grace was getting frustrated, and then she wrote me the following:

***

So here I was becoming very angry and downcast because I'm sick of failing at every project I take on. It seams that every outlet I replace looks worse than the one I took off. Very frustrating. [She was replacing electrical plates].

But as I took a break from my labors to eat a burrito, someone knocked on the door. It was one of those realtor ladies we met with several weeks ago (I can't remember her name). She said that she just sold a unit identical to ours and wanted to tell me about it.

So standing here in wet hair, painter jeans and a t-shirt that is too small, I invited her in and we had a nice chat. The unit [she sold] looked terrible. It had multi-colored carpeting, no upgrades and was all over dingy. It sold in 21 days for $330 with concessions. There is another one on the market that has been sitting there twice as long, has many upgrades but smells like mothballs. That one is listed for $325. She said the primary reason that one is not selling is because the guy won't de-clutter the place and is not having any open houses.

All good information.

She looked around and again expressed great pleasure in the simple touches we have added to our place. She loved the color of the bedroom but said that if we want to show the place we MUST get rid of more stuff. She said "you can keep half the books that are in here. And I know that typewriter is a cute antique and all but it should probably find a temporary home in the storage shed." Then she said to get rid of more stuff in the closet and oh, yeah, the bikes MUST go!

Then we began discussing prices. She said that we were going to be hard pressed to find someone to rent for what we are asking but she is willing to help us out in any way possible -- she even offered to host our open houses for us!

When we began talking about the changes in the short sale laws, I handed her a copy of my newsletter which has an article in it about that. She was impressed and wanted to know more about the newsletter. She said, "This is a much better alternative for you than getting your realtor's license." Then she asked if she could advertise in it! Then she asked if she could pass it along to some of her friends -- a contractor, title company, and other Realtors -- who would like to advertise.

The whole thing was like getting a visit from an angel. There is so much more I could tell you about but I'll save the details for tonight.

Cheers,
Grace

***

So, whatever. This is the latest in a series of spikes of hope. I fully expect our upstairs neighbor's toilet to burst tonight.