Hey everyone! Update time...
We met with a Realtor on Tuesday night. She was great! (and cute!) Her sales are in the top 30 of her 500-agent agency, so I was impressed with that. More importantly, she sold a very comparable house just down the street from us two weeks ago. She sold it in 8 days for a fair price, based on the data we reviewed. She spent a ton of time with us, working around our schedule, and gave very (very) specific advice on de-cluttering, what to repaint, how to reposition furniture, etc. She pays for professional photos - she says they make a huge difference, and from looking at Zillow and other sites, I tend to agree. Dark photos = I immediately lose interest.
So our plan is changing now. We'll probably skip the "living with FIL" stage. She thinks she can get us into a new house within with the 45 days or so we'll schedule for our own closing. She will suggest a list price next week (we haven't signed with her yet), and if we're in agreement we'll probably sign with her. She said our city's home inventory is really low now (3.5 months worth) and she thinks we can sell our house pretty quickly even in the winter. Frankly, our yard looks pretty bad in the spring, so selling in the winter actually means we'll have greater curb appeal.
Re: pricing strategy, she said the idea used to be to list high to leave lots of wiggle room for negotiations. But she says that frequently results in potential buyers being so turned off by the price that they don't even bother. She says her preferred strategy is to list it right at what the market says it's worth, which frequently results in (pretty quick) full-price offers, and even multiple offer situations, where the selling price ends up exceeding the listing price, because once people get attached to the idea of owning the home, they sometimes are more willing to pay a bit more than they would have been initially so avoid it being snatched away from them. Does this sound right to anyone? The attorney in me sees the logic in what she's saying. I can really see people getting attached to the idea of owning a certain home once they put in an offer on it.
Buying a home in the winter/early spring will also give our kiddos time to get used to the new neighborhood before summer hits (my older daughter will be 11.5, going into middle school, and we'll probably let her stay home this summer at least every other week, sprinkling in a few week-long camps along the way). There is also less competition for us in buying a home in winter/early spring, although there is less to choose from.
I am 99% sure she will suggest a list price in the $139,900 to $144,900 range, based on the comps she showed us, so we should clear around $70,000 after the mortgage is paid off. We're looking at homes in the $175,000-$200,000 price range now and our online searches show some nice homes in that range in the area we want, but they are usually snatched up within 10 days. Putting $70,000 down should result in a new mortgage in the $105,000 to $130,000 neighborhood, which we can handle.
I guess I am not a full Mustachian now! Well, I probably never will be. We aren't interested in renting out the house. I don't want to be too leveraged, especially as I still owe student loans. And using her will probably only cost us $4500 or so. Yes, that's a large amount of money, but from a hassle perspective, if she can sell it in 2 weeks, I will consider that money well spent. We would also hopefully be able to avoid some storage costs, having to move furniture over to my FIL's (he wouldn't have enough beds for us), having to change our address twice (ugh I hate thinking about that), etc.