The Santinis: Buying and Selling

Saturday, December 1, 2018

Buying and Selling

Nick and I made the decision about two years ago that we wanted to move from Charlotte to a new location that would have more options for Vince as he got older. We then had to decide where to move to. We started looking around and decided on Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor, or DeWitt. We looked at jobs and the housing market in each spot. Grand Rapids was on the list because we loved living there while I was in college and there are a lot of opportunities for Vince. Ann Arbor was on the list because there are so many doctor appointments in our life and it would make that easier for us, plus Ann Arbor is a cool town. DeWitt was on the list because we would still be in the middle of the state, we could keep our jobs, and we have family here. DeWitt was a little bit of our safe choice, but it was on the list. After looking at job perspective and how much it cost to live in the areas we wanted to live, we decided DeWitt was the best spot for us. Now that we are here, I know that we absolutely made the right choice for us. We wanted to move before Dominic started kindergarten so that gave us about a year once we decided where we were going to move to. The first step was getting the house ready to sell. We did a few things to it, but overall, it was in good condition. The biggest thing we had to do was decluttter it a bit. We rented a storage unit and put some of our stuff in it. We ended up having our neighbor, Doug, be our realtor. It ended up taking longer than we thought it would to sell, but because of past experiences, we knew it would sell when it was supposed to. We put the house up for sale on July 20th and it did not sell until May 10th. The timing ended up being perfect. We found our new house after looking at a lot of them, but I will explain how that all happened in the next post. We loved our old house and really thought we would be there for a long time, but it was time to move on. The lady who bought our house is wonderful and I have stayed in touch with her a bit. I am so glad she loves it as much as we did.