Estate Sale - one more day... then I get my house back

Thank you, Pidge. I looked at the end of my followers list, and in the followers without a photo I found some new people.

So.... Welcome to Steve, a new Follower to Me and My Dog.  I checked out his blogs, and it looks like he's really into Poker!  Steve, we're really happy to have you join us on our adventure!

Welcome also to April Solla and trustnoone1018, who recently became Followers. They don't have photos or blogs that I could find, but I'm sure happy to have you following along with me and my dog, Katie.

To answer some of your "comment" questions about the Estate Sale:

Yes, a LOT of the stuff in the photos in my last post was not mine. And a lot of it is still here, but it should all be gone tomorrow.

I don't think I was taken advantage of, not much anyway. I think maybe this is a normal thing for these kinds of sales.  I think they could have been a little more organized, and they could have kept things cleaner (my carpets), and I would have appreciated them getting everything out sooner.  My understanding was that everything would be gone on Monday after the sale.

I actually agreed to have other people's things, from previous Estate Sales, included in my sale.  I didn't realize how much there would be, though. That is why we had a 65/35 split of the take. That way they could continue selling things from previous sales, and increase their take. If I didn't agree, I would have gotten a 50/50 split.  They said they also did well with the "other people's" stuff, and previous customers would be happy to get a check in the mail.

They hire a crew (two people at my sale since my home is small) and moving vans to and from each sale to haul things to the next sale, they have all their sales equipment, cash register, website, all the business expenses.  I don't think they would have netted much without the other stuff being here.

They said they did much better than expected at my sale, they keep adding more from boxes of stuff on hand that doesn't fit at first, and that keeps people coming back to see what's new the next day.  They had a high volume of lookers each day. My neighbor said people were coming and going all day, and they extended the sale to 5:30 each day because of the traffic.

For my stuff, every piece of furniture was sold, anything that really had any value.  Only little things were left like dishes, glasses, Christmas ornaments, things like that.  I didn't want them to schlep my leftovers to their next sales, so I opted for a "buy out," they called a couple of companies who will buy out the remainder after Estate Sales, and I was offered $250 for what was left. I thought that was very generous, and it was still a 65/35 split, so the deal was made.

About half of the things are gone now, and about half of what's left is packed up in boxes, and will be gone tomorrow.  The carpet cleaner is coming on Thursday.

One thing to remember is that when people have Estate Sales, at least around here, the owner of the "estate" has usually died or moved to an assisted care or similar residence.  They are gone, the sale is held, the money paid and everyone is happy.  I'm still here, and popped in almost every day.  I wonder if that is unusual for them, and if I was just too "present" at my own sale.  If I had gone to visit my daughter for a week or so and then come back, I wouldn't have seen all this, and it wouldn't have been a problem.  Do you remember how your house looked when you were moving?  When most of the stuff was boxed up, there were creases and marks in the carpets where the heavy furniture was, cobwebs and little pieces of things left from moving out the big stuff.  Just kind of messy.  That's what my place looks like now - other than the carpet stains, which hopefully will be taken care of.

And I do have to say, they called me at least once a day to keep me updated on what was happening. I appreciated that. And now that it's almost over, I can't imagine any other way I could have gotten rid of everything in one week.

When I get the final payment, I'll let you know what what my total was, might as well.  Considering all my furniture was at least ten years old, not in perfect condition, and I didn't want it, I'll be very happy to get the check.  They give their customers a money order or Cashier's Check, the first one is 65 percent of the cash they took in, the second one depends on the "hold time" the bank places on the checks deposited. When they clear, usually 3 to 5 days, then I'll get the remainder.  They gave me an approximate number, but I'll tell you when it's final. Maybe it will help someone else out there make a decision, and you'll know much more than I did.

Soon this will be over and I'll be bringing The Palms to Santee Lakes, and Katie and I will be full-timers, and this will be an interesting memory.  We move on June 1!!!

At the beach on Saturday, I pulled out the couch and Katie and I took a nap and tried it out.  It was really comfortable!

 Just a reminder - love my kitchen!

Can't wait!

From Me and My Dog, have a great Tuesday evening, everyone! : )

OMG! Wait till you see this!

Happy Mother's Day!

This is what I found when I came home today:

 They said my house was almost empty - this is the living room

 My dining room

 The dressing area outside my bathroom

Kitchen

They told me they are having the carpet cleaned.  Now I know why.  This is the carpet right inside my front door, see the lovely black stain:

This is the worst stain, but there are small ones all over the carpet

 The guest bedroom was almost empty, this is where we are sleeping

I borrowed my neighbor's vacuum and a sheet to lay on the carpet, then put my open sleeping bag on top of a quilt so we can sleep in reasonable cleanliness.

I made more than I expected from the sale, but honestly - I think I've been sugarcoating things. It hasn't been as easy as it looked.  The ladies were pretty disorganized, brought in, I felt, a lot more of other people's stuff than I thought they should have.  Once I was committed and signed the contract, I just kind of let things go, figuring they have been in business a long time and were the professionals.  But I really don't think they respected my property.  I sure liked them and trusted them at our first meeting, but...

(Merikay asked in her blog if any of us delete or re-write our posts - well, Merikay, here is the space where I cut out all my ranting... Four long paragraphs.) 

Just beware if you hire a company to do an estate sale.  I can't believe they are all like this, do some checking of references before signing the contract. 

I might be a little happier after I receive my check.  I'll let you know.  : )

I had a comment on my blog that a follower is in the middle of a short sale.  I have been thinking about doing that. I just learned about short sales from two ladies at my Estate Sale. They both did short sales on their homes and explained how it works.  One has a realtor that specializes in short sales and I’m going to call her tomorrow. 

I will never move back to my condo, I can’t afford the mortgage when I retire. I’ve already lost my $70,000 down payment because of the downturn in the market, and now I’m thinking, why bother with renters?  It will never appreciate to the point where I can sell it and break even, why not just let it go. 

I just had a woman call me to rent my place, and she explained that she had to let her home go, but her credit report was still 720, so it didn’t hurt her too much. That’s 4 people this weekend that told me they had a short sale, and I've never talked to anyone before about short sales. I’m wondering if someone is trying to tell me something?!?


I have 90 Followers now!  Every so often the numbers are strange.  I had 89 before, and now it shows 90, but I don't see any new photos.  I hope I'm not missing anyone, the photos are added at the top where we can see them and there aren't any new ones after Bob, so if I've missed anyone, I apologize.

From Me and My Dog, Katie, have a good Sunday night, everyone!  : )

Easter photos

To answer my commenters about the generator's fuel:  I DO remember reading in the Onan User's manual that there is an automatic shut-off if the gas tank gets lower than 1/4 full, so you don't run out of gas for driving. I had forgotten that, and I think I asked my question wrong to the La Mesa RV man. I guess if it needed no fuel, it would be one of those perpetual motion machines, and they haven't been invented yet, have they?  I sure did like thinking that I could run it forever with no fuel, though. : )

Here's one more shot of the beach today:

I never posted photos from Easter at my son's house, so since I didn't take any today, I'll put them here:

 Have a little dip with your cracker, Graydin?

 The adults in the dining room, kids were in the kitchen

 They couldn't break the ribbon to "GO" until Graydin was ready.

The older kids were so patient.

 Is there one under there?

 Kennedy finds one!

 Look at all Gavin's eggs!

It was a fun day, good food, good company and a fun Easter Egg Hunt.

I am again here at the beach - we're in a different spot, the first one after the long red curb for the buses.  That gives me a good place to back up when leaving.   I really don't need that, though, because by the time I leave, everyone is gone and the street is empty of parked cars.

It's nice just hanging out after having a pretty stressful week, and all the packing and moving boxes I've done for the last couple of weeks.  (You should see my arms and legs - OMG - I have so many bruises!)

The Estate Sale ladies gave me the names of 4 people who might be interested in renting, I called them today and left 3 messages and talked to one older woman who is not sure yet. She needs to talk it over with her kids.  I just got a call from the ladies a bit ago.  The sale is over, they got one more name of a potential tenant, so I'll call him when I post this.  As long as they were willing to take names and numbers I decided to try that. These people have seen the condo, gone inside and looked around, and if I can get a tenant myself I will do that. But if none of these leads work out, I'll meet with the realtor - I am also thinking about a short sale. When I stopped by yesterday two different women there, one is a neighbor, told me they did short sales. Since I don't plan to ever move back to the condo, I just might do some research on that option.

The sale went pretty well, but am I glad it's over!  I am netting a bit more than I had hoped for.  I went to the condo last night.  After the first day it was a  mess!!!  But one of the ladies wasn't there that day or the previous night, so they were short handed. (She had chest pains and ended up in the ER the night before.)  She was back yesterday, and when I stopped by after the sale, the condo was much more organized and actually looked pretty good.  They had taken some of the other people's stuff out, and I was much happier with how things looked. 

When they called this evening, they said the condo is almost empty. A couple of big pieces of furniture still need to be picked up by the buyers, and they are having the carpets cleaned, and the companies for the sale of everything that is left will come by to bid on the remainder.  So next week some time I'll get it back, empty and clean.

I know you are all wondering what the final total sales came out to, but I'm not going to post that.  Every sale is different, and every area is different.  Even the people who came this week would be different than next week, so my totals are not going to be the same as any other sale.  I will say, though, that I had hoped for a certain amount, and my profit exceeded that, so I am happy. 

Katie and I have taken two walks so far, and she's being really good.  I wasnt' sure how she would be this close to all the people running and walking by the windows, some with dogs that she knows are there. Mostly she is quiet, a couple of times she barked, but stopped when I told her to.  A little guttural growling from time to time, but on the whole she's been very quiet, so maybe she won't bark much in an RV park, which will have far fewer people walking by The Palms.

Tonight we are going back to the same parking lot we were in last night, then I want to come back here again. I'm going to park further up the road, on the top of a small hill, where we'll get a different view and be able to walk in a different area.  I'm meeting my neighbor, Julie, for a Mother's Day lunch at 1:00, so we'll drive back home then.

I plan to bring The Palms back to the storage lot and get my car Sunday afternoon, and sleep in the condo tomorrow night, since I have work the next morning.  I hope I can at least find one clean, clear area to lay down my sleeping bag.  I may borrow a sheet from my neighbor to lay down on the carpet.

From Me and Katie, have a Wonderful Mother's Day tomorrow, everyone!  :)

A beautiful day at the beach

WELCOME to our new Follower, Bob, from Chasing Grace!  He is planning to sell everything and take his dog and future RV on the road.  Bob has another blog, too, about running - Hey Bob, you'd love Carlsbad - right here by the beach it's perfect for running!  : )

I went by the condo on my way to wherever I was staying stealth-wise yesterday.  The Estate Sale was in full swing, I still couldn't believe all the junk in my condo that was brought in, but they made more money than I expected and none of the big stuff sold. Today, the second day of the sale, they discount everything, and tomorrow will be the rock bottom prices.

One of my neighbors came by to see what was going on, and I mentioned that I was going to do some stealth camping for the next two nights.  She has a horse trailer that she's been parking around the neighborhood and told me exactly where to park.  There are a few areas that she's gotten away with leaving her horse trailer, and the one place where it was tagged, it had a  3-day notice on it to move.

I parked in one place last night, and as soon as I got everything ready, I saw the Security Patrol guy in his car in the parking lot across the street, and of course he had to see me, but when he was done checking the buildings over there, he drove away, and no one bothered us.   I set my phone alarm for 6 am so we could be out of there before anyone started arriving for work.

We drove to the beach after filling the tank this morning. I had seen RVs camped along Historic Highway Route 101 before, so I drove for a while until I found the spot.  I am parked right behind a red zone, so no one can block me in.  We got here around 7:30 am, and have been here for 10 hours.  It was foggy all morning, but now the sun is shining.

 Isn't that a beautiful sight - the Pacific Ocean

 We are parked in front of this area.

 We took a walk along the sidewalk this afternoon, these little critters were sunning on the rocks. Squirrels?

  This is a beautiful place to walk/run.

People have been walking their dogs and baby carriages all day. 

Lots of runners here.  Carlsbad is full of healthy people!

Yesterday evening I went to a Target and bought some food for the weekend, and also a printer. I have a nice Cannon printer that I was going to keep. I decided yesterday that it's too big and too heavy to move around The Palms, so I dropped it off at the Estate Sale, and bought a smaller, lighter HP Photosmart printer. It's a color printer, wireless, and prints great. I can leave it on the bench seat under the window, and it's out of the way, but handy when I need it.  I set it up this afternoon. The wireless was super easy to set up with my new 4G LTE.

HP Photosmart D110a e-All-in-One Printer

I've learned a lot this weekend.  Last evening I stopped at Fish House Vera Cruz, one of my favorite fish restaurants, and ordered a dinner to go. I brought it back to The Palms and had dinner with Katie. While eating I was reading on the laptop and the generator went off.  It was still running, but nothing was working off it.  I got out my manuals and was able to figure out and fix the problem. It was the breaker.  I checked the generator's oil and found the breaker and re-set it.  I was feeling like a pro.  Then I went back to my dinner, and it's been fine since.

I called Forest River to find out about my radio. I talked to Mike and he said they take out the original and put in a Sirius Ready radio and told me which one they use, so I could download the User's Manual from the web, which I did, but I haven't tried to program the radio yet.  I guess it's a pretty nice radio, the friend of my daughter and son-in-law who programmed the time and one of my stations for me in Vacaville seemed impressed with it.  It's nice, even without subscribing to Sirius, which I may do in the future.

Then I called La Mesa RV and talked to my Customer Service person, who is my go-to guy for any questions I have. This will sound silly to some of you, probably most of you, but I was worried about running the generator too long - using up something, so I asked him what the generator runs off of, gas, propane, ???  He told me it uses the coach batteries to get started, then runs by itself.  I didn't know that!  How cool is that! So now I'm not worried that I'll use up some kind of fuel when I run it.  I couldn't find anything in the Onan User's Manual, probably because they figure that if you have one, you probably know that.

Then I mentioned to him that I have an appointment to have my Dometic fridge serviced - to take care of the recall, next Friday.  I checked on line, and mine is affected by the 2006 recall and I called Dometic to see if my unit had been serviced, and it had not.  But Jeremy said he'd check my file, and came back and it WAS done. He said before they sell a used RV they check for any recalls and take care of everything before it leaves the lot. Dometic just didn't have the info.

So far, so good. Katie seems to have settled right in, and I'm very comfortable and feel safe and secure in The Palms with just me and Katie.

These guys are constantly flying overhead - they go over the beach South, turn around and come back North, a continuous circle - I see them every day I drive home this way, and they facinate me.  So regal looking!  I took more photos of them this afternoon.  What are they?

There seem to be two groups that form together, with an occasional threesome that flies by.

And now I'm going to take a nap.  This sitting by the beach watching all the people running by is exhausting!

From Me and My Dog, Katie, have a great Friday evening, everyone!    : )

Okay, I'm calming down a little, still in the hotel parking lot

A HUGE thank you to everyone who left comments in the last few days.  Your insight has really helped me calm down, think things through, and come to a new decision.  I hate to admit it, but sometimes it's hard to make all the decisions on my own, especially when so much is happening at once and I'm not sure how to handle things.  I am feeling much calmer tonight.

You might remember I met with a Realtor a couple of months ago to give me an appraisal on what he thought I could sell the condo for, and it wasn't enough yet to pay off the mortgage.  That's when I decided I'd rent it out. He is also a property manager, and I have seen him in action in the neighborhood.  He and his wife have a pretty successful real estate business.  They seem to be listing and selling quite a few properties here where I live.

I came over to The Palms at lunch and re-read yesterday's post and the recent comments and decided to send him an e-mail to see if he would rent and manage the condo for me.  My kids thought he was too expensive, but I don't think I'm cut out to be my own property manager, and if he can get me a good tenant, it would be worth it to me.  I haven't heard back from him yet, and I think I'd like to see what happens at the Estate Sale and if anyone is interested in renting and leaving their name with the ladies working it.  If nothing comes of that, I'll meet with him and see if he can help.

I've just got too much going on right now to take care of everything, and having that taken off my plate will be a huge relief.

I checked the website of my Estate Sale ladies to see what they have for my sale, which starts tomorrow.  They did a really nice job, listed tons of stuff, lots of good photos, and even said the condo is for rent, and they would take names of any interested parties for the owner to call back.  I thought that was really nice of them to add to their listing.  

I've already made a sale!  One of the "crew" saw him and LOVED him and bought him for her daughter:

I thought about keeping him, but that wouldn't be very fair to him, sloshing around whenever I was on the road.

I'm still in the hotel parking lot tonight.  Tomorrow after work I plan to drive back home and park somewhere nearby.  

From Me and Katie, have a good evening, everyone!  : )