I know the real estate market stinks right now, but…

Last summer we redid our bathroom. Our condo was built in 1973 and our bathroom was the original bathroom, right down to the icky faux marble counter top. We always dreamed of having one of those sleek bathroom designs, like the kind you see in upscale homes. We just had to wait until our budget allowed for it.

Last year, with some help from my father (it will take us forever to pay him back!), we finally redid our bathroom. It’s just a plain, simple bathroom. No “bells and whistles”, but it’s a huge improvement from what it was prior to being made over.

I was hoping to have one of those cool modern bathroom vanities, but my husband insisted that we stick with something simple because we were planning on putting our home on the market and he felt that if we used something that was a bit too “over the top” it might not appeal to most people. I can see his point.

At least our bathroom looks nice. As does the walk in closet in the bedroom. We remodeled that too. In fact we put a lot of time, effort, $$$$ and elbow grease into getting our condo in tip top shape just to put it on the market. All except the kitchen. We have new appliances and a gorgeous kitchen floor (I ♥ my kitchen floor!). The cabinets and counter tops are the original.

Our place has been on the market for just about 3 months and we’ve only had 3 people come over to see it. We’ve even dropped the price $10,000 in the last month. For the life of us we just can’t figure out what is wrong with our place. We did everything the real estate agent told us to do. Not only that, when we know someone is coming over we scrub the place clean from top to bottom and I “stage” it so that it looks warm and inviting.

We’ve been house hunting and have looked at many places, at least a dozen. Of all the places we’ve seen only ONE house was clean – JUST ONE! Some where empty, so we can understand the dust and cobwebs, but at least half of the houses were still occupied and people left their dirty clothes on the floor, garbage hanging out of the garbage can, dust you can write your name in… you name it. Yet these houses are SELLING!

To make matters worst we’ve already found a house we LOVE. We love it so much we can actually picture ourselves living in it. My husband and I have different tastes, and up until now we haven’t really agreed on much as far as a house is concerned. The moment we walked into this one house we looked at each other and new it was “home”. It just felt right. We both felt it.

I have even started to decorate the house in my mind. I have colors picked out for the walls, I have an idea where I would hang artwork and I’ve even started to remodel the bathroom. I spent well over an hour on the site Modern Bathroom (www.ModernBathroom.com) picking out a vanity, sink and even a faucet for the bathroom in the house that we love. Don’t get me wrong, the bathroom is nice, I just think it needs a bit more pizazz. Modern Bathroom has so many different designs and styles. From modern to antique. I tend to favor the antique looks.

They even carry eco-friendly accessories, furniture and fixtures.

I am in love this this vanity, as well as this mirror. I think it would look perfect in the bathroom in the house we would love to buy.

I just love the antique look to them. The vanity is my favorite. It’s so ornate!

Of course we need to be able to buy the house first. Sigh…

Our bathroom was redone, we have brand new sliding glass doors ($$$!), brand new windows, remodeled walk-in closet, freshly painted rooms, new AC’s, ceiling fans in every room, nice view… I could go on and on and list all the features in our home. Not to mention it’s sparkling clean. So why isn’t anyone interested in it? Not even a nibble. We can’t even drop the price anymore or we will be in the hole.

I realize the market stinks right now. But places ARE selling. Just not ours.

Could it be the kitchen? Could it be that our cabinets and counter top is the original from the early 70′s? Could that be the only down side to our place? If that is the case then we’re stuck here. There is no way we can afford a total kitchen make over. We just don’t have that kind of money, not to mention we won’t see anything back as far as a return is concerned.

For those of you who have been successful in selling your home, can you offer any words of advice? If you have any tips, tricks or suggestions I am open to them. We’ve even buried a St. Joseph statue that is suppose to help (and hasn’t).

We want to sell our condo so we can jump on that house we love before it sells. We also want to move on to the next chapter in our lives.

I’m sorry to ramble. It’s just very frustrating as you can imagine.