selling home

Moving States: Part II

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I shared the background of our decision to move to KY in my last post. Here, I am going to break down the details of our moving decisions, mostly focused on the financials. My next post will be how we made housing decisions.

MOVING LOGISTICS

I was spoiled. Every single move I did between college and this past year was orchestrated and paid for by the government. NY to PA; PA to DC; DC to Richmond, VA. I didn’t touch a thing. Movers came and packed up all my things for one day. Then they came the next day and loaded a truck. Then they delivered my goods and put the boxes and furniture in the right rooms.

On our way to Richmond, VA, we decided to build our house, so we needed temporary housing. That also meant that we needed storage. The movers packed up our things and brought them to storage until I called to schedule the delivery to our house. I asked for one step extra that time – unpack all the boxes and take away the boxes and packing material. I never thought it was necessary because I liked having things clean and organized in boxes that could be pushed to a corner. Well, having them lay everything out on a flat surface (they didn’t put things away in cabinets and such) made me have my entire house unpacked and put away in a weekend. Yup. S P O I L E D!

Fast forward back to our move to KY. I no longer work for the agency that paid for relocation; I wasn’t taking a new job that would have made me eligible anyway; and Mr. ODA’s agency doesn’t pay for relocation, nor was he taking a new position.

So where do I begin?

  • We’re moving from one state to another, 500 miles.
  • We need storage for an indefinite amount of time, but something like 7-8 weeks.
  • How am I to pack up a house, while still needing things to live and managing an infant and toddler?
  • What’s the financial threshold for this adventure? Am I looking at 10k or 30k? What’s the itemized cost of each step for me to determine if it’s worth the money? Can I parse out each step?
  • How big of a storage unit do we need?
  • How much do I need to pack for our ‘homeless’ time? Oh, and it’s covering summer (with beach time) and fall temperatures.

It cost us $5,500. We did a lot ourselves.

I started by trying to find a quote at all the “pod” type places. Several of them required me to make a phone call. You know what’s really not easy to do with an infant and toddler? That’s right, spending time on the phone. My absolute most favorite is when there’s an automated message that I need to verbally respond to, while kids are screaming (whether positively or negatively) in the background, and the robot just keeps saying “I’m sorry, I didn’t get that. Let’s try again.” Eh, digressing like usual…

I went with UHaul. Their website wasn’t able to create my order, so I had to call. It kept claiming my goods would be stored only for the 500 mile trek, and kept trying to pick a delivery date one week after pick up. But once I called them, they were able to get it all squared away.

UHaul’s boxes are smaller, about half the size of the big ‘pod’ type things you’re used to seeing in driveways. We liked that if we ordered 8 boxes, based on their recommendation for our house size, but didn’t use all of them, they wouldn’t charge us for the unused boxes. Unfortunately for that plan, we ended up needing a 9th box. They were super accommodating; since their truck carries 5 boxes at a time and our order required two trips anyway, they just loaded the extra box on the second truck without charging us for the drop.

I had called the ‘all inclusive’ type movers before making this decision. Their quotes were anywhere from 12k to 35k. Well, once we heard that we were looking at about $4k for UHaul, it wasn’t worth the luxury option. The $4k included the boxes being dropped off and pickup in VA, shipping to KY, and storage for 2 months in KY. It didn’t include delivery from storage to our house in KY, but more on that shortly.

Mr. ODA had faith that I could pack up the house while raising children. 🙂 I did it! Also, with the help of many neighbors, I didn’t pay for a single box. One neighbor works for CVS and was able to bring home their boxes from deliveries, and several others dropped their Amazon or old moving boxes off for me. We purchased packing paper, bubble wrap (I actually liked the packing paper better), and packaging tape from Walmart.

Closing was the 18th, so I hired movers for the 16th. There were several questionable reviews about movers not showing, and I wanted the buffer to pivot if that came to fruition for us. It was $415 for 2 movers for 4 hours. They ended up coming with a trainee, so they had more help, but didn’t get everything packed. Our house was 2,850 square feet across two floors, with 4 bedrooms. The part that wasn’t factored in well was all the storage that was kept in our walk-in attic and all the things in the garage. They were able to get the house emptied, but didn’t do most of the garage. We had a friend come help with the odds and ends, but it was worth it to pay for the movers. They could get things out of the house a lot faster than if we had done it ourselves. Our movers weren’t great about not hitting the walls and being nice to our furniture (I walked in to one guy trying to move part of our sectional down the stairs by himself, and just let it slide down the first set of stairs – beautiful). Perhaps if we paid a bit more, we could have gotten a better team, but nothing broke and the worst was just paint scuffs.

UHaul came and picked up 5 of the finished boxes on the 16th, so that was nice to have them off the street in under 24 hours.

The plan was to deep clean the house on the 17th and close on the 18th. I hung out with friends on a nice day and didn’t get nearly enough done. We had to figure out where to sleep for that last night without most of our things, so we kept the kids’ cribs and an air mattress available. So on the morning of the 18th, we threw the rest of our things in the last UHaul box right before the lady came to pick up the last of the boxes around 8 am. I was so worried about boxes being there on closing day, but it worked out well that the truck driver said she could come first thing that morning to clear the rest of the boxes.

Then it was time to gather the things we deemed necessary (or unpackable in storage) for our two months before our new home was ready. We packed up the van with all these things, which took significantly longer than I expected it to. We had to be out of the house for the final walk through by 11 am, and by some miracle, our 5 month old daughter slept until we had to wake her up to take down her crib at 10:50! We were literally throwing things in the van while the buyers waited for us to get out of their way. I was disappointed in myself.

UHaul would store our things near the pick up or drop off location. I chose the drop off location for storage because we didn’t have a definitive date for closing on the new house. I wanted to be able to give a few days notice for taking our things out of storage versus waiting two weeks from notice to get to us, and having the possibility of delays (which were quite common during the pandemic).

There was a hiccup on the back end of this transaction though. We paid about $200 for the ‘box drop and pick up’ at our packing location. We couldn’t figure out why we only had a $1300 option on the unpacking end. When we arrived in Kentucky, we went over to talk to someone about it and see if we had more options in person. It turns out that their reason for not having the $200 option is because they don’t have the flat bed truck! Crazy. They had trailers to rent, but most carried one box at a time. They had one trailer that could carry 2 at at time, but then we also needed to rent their truck that could tow that weight. We had a couple of weeks to figure out the logistics of moving day and how long it would take to have to make so many trips back and forth to UHaul, which was 25 minutes away.

We rented the truck and 2-box trailer, and we hired a guy who used to work for that UHaul location to be our box runner. We had him pick up two boxes and drive them to our house. We had a team of friends and family here to unload the boxes into the driveway (luckily it was a beautiful 60 degree November day). Then while the guy drove back for two more boxes, our friends here took things from the driveway/garage and brought them to the right rooms inside. The plan seemed perfect, but it turns out that the process of bringing things inside was about 1/10th of the time it took for that guy to go back and get two more boxes, so there was a lot of down time. But hey, none of our friends were upset about down time! We paid the box runner for 6 hours of his time and gave him a tip. We had some issues because he didn’t fill the gas tank when he brought it back, so we got charged for that (which we were pretty unhappy about after giving him a substantial tip), but UHaul took the charges off our card for that.

For dropping 9 boxes, moving the boxes 500+ miles, and storing them for 2 months, we paid $4,420. Then add in the $420 for the movers on the packing end and $500 for the driver on the unpacking end. That was significantly lower than our 10k expectation!

Moving States: Part I

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In March 2020, as we all know, a pandemic hit. Well, our second child came into the world at the end of March, just a week after lock down. My family lives in NY, and Mr. ODA’s family lives in KY. So living in VA left us without family, with limited visits, and only seeing some neighbors while hanging out in yards and the street, but no child care or help.

We had talked about officially moving to KY while we spent the summer of 2019 there for Mr. ODA’s work assignment, but we decided it wasn’t the right time. We loved our neighborhood and town back home, and we just weren’t ready to leave. Mr. ODA was offered a promotion in DC at the same time, and that sealed the deal for us to stay in VA. The cost of living in NY near my family (Long Island), along with the crowded lifestyle, was not something we wished to pursue after experienced a ‘taste’ of the traffic and crowds when we lived by DC, which is why ‘moving near family’ meant KY.

On a walk one night in June 2020, Mr. ODA mentioned moving to KY again. He was working from home indefinitely, so there wasn’t anything holding us to VA (except my Ob and the kids’ pediatrician…. gosh it was hard for me to leave them!). At this point, isolated from most people because of the pandemic, the logic was there to make the move. Additionally, our mortgage was a 5/1 ARM that was coming due in January, so selling our house a few months before that was great timing.

LISTING OUR HOUSE

We built our house and moved in at the beginning of January 2016. For a new house, we had a lot of little projects that had to be completed before we could have people walk through it. When we sold our first house, we put a lot of our things into our neighbor’s basement as storage. This time around, we had to do the same, but without a neighbor’s basement as help.

There were the typical paint touchups, wiping baseboards, and moving of furniture. There were just several small projects that needed attended to (like replacing burnt out light bulbs and buying a comforter that fit our new bed), which took me about two weeks before we could get the pictures done for the listing.

We had one room that was the catch-all for mismatched furniture. We were told to give the room a purpose. I was able to get the exercise bike, desk, bed, and bookshelf to live harmoniously.

For pictures, we chose to keep a full-size bed in one of the bedrooms, but I quickly changed it to our daughter’s crib. We were afraid that if people saw a crib, they’d think the room was too small for a bed. So while, functionally, I needed that crib, I didn’t mind if they saw it during the walk through because they could refer back to the listing photos to see the bed there instead.

SOLD QUICKER THAN PLANNED

It’s hard to manage the expectation of how long the house will be on the market against how long to wait for listing it. We knew our new house wasn’t going to be ready until November. I was too afraid to wait until everyone went back to school, especially with all the uncertainty of what school would look like. I pushed to list mid-August (central VA goes back to school after Labor Day).

We were under contract at the end of the first weekend listed. They asked for a 3 week close, and we denied that. There was no incentive for us to move that quickly. We asked how long they’d be willing to push it, and they agreed to 30 days because they’d be living in a hotel with their family of 5. That was exactly 7 weeks between leaving our house and our new house being ready.

We decided to seize the opportunity and travel with that time. Since Mr. ODA was working remotely anyway, we could explore new places where he could work during the week from our hotel or AirBnB. I had one rule – there had to be two separate sleep areas because our 6 month old required her room to be pitch black for sleep, and messing with a baby’s sleep hurts mama! Our options are also limited because we have a dog.

Here’s how we had to unpack and repack the car each time!

Week 1 – We went to the beach! We grabbed a beautiful little AirBnB in Norfolk, two blocks from a little beach and boardwalk. I took the kids to the zoo one day, and we played at the school playground across the street a bunch.

Week 2 – We went back to our old neighborhood and imposed on some friends. Our daughter had her 6 month pediatrician appointment, and I wasn’t about to give up an opportunity to see our wonderful doctor again. Their family has kids the same age as ours, but their youngest was still sleeping in the parents’ room, which left his crib available to our youngest. As a bonus, they went on vacation for the week! As a form of payment for our time there, I painted their first floor. I love to paint, so I enjoyed having an activity. Our oldest got sick at the beginning of the week and his fever wasn’t breaking, so we ended up at the doctor 3 times with an eventual ear infection diagnosis. Him being sick delayed my progress, but I got it all done.

Week 3 – Bristol VA and TN. Mr. ODA took more time off during this week so that we could go hiking and explore the area more. It’s beautiful down there.

Week 4 to 7 – We went to KY to stay with Mr. ODA’s parents. By the time I got there, I wasn’t leaving until we moved into our new house. It was a lot to pack up the car, unload it all, keep it organized, live with the minimum for the two kids, and then pack it all back up again. I ended up cancelling two of our trips that we had planned. I kept one where we went back to our old neighborhood for Halloween. I wanted our oldest to play with his friend for the holiday, but then we didn’t even really see them. Our youngest had her flu vaccine booster that weekend too.

In hindsight, our quick decision to move was great timing. We knew there were bidding wars happening over real estate (our Realtor fielded 16 offers on a home in Richmond, VA the same weekend we listed!), but we didn’t know it was going to get as bad as it has where inventory is so low and house prices climbed. While we may have been able to get more for our house a month or so later, we wouldn’t have found many options for what we wanted in KY.

House prices in KY are about 8% higher than this time last year, and our area’s housing prices are 11% higher, according to Zillow. Example: Our neighbor was under contract to purchase his house in July. They had a new job offer come in, and they sold their house earlier this month for $55k more than they purchased it. That’s a 14% increase in less than a year.