okay um what area do you are you in what area of the country
okay
uh i'm in southwest Houston
oh in Houston okay i'm up in Plano near Dallas
uh-huh where
yeah
do you live in a suburb or
yeah i live in uh um
well i live uh i live about five minutes from the TI plant and it's in uh a it's in the a leaf area which doesn't mean anything to you but it's in a it's in a subdivision and it's
um-hum
um-hum
yeah
uh
probably
uh i don't know three bedroom house with uh
uh-huh
you know fenced in yard and it's it's an older house it's about twenty years old i bought it about four years ago and i've been kind of fixing it up and uh doing things to it as i can
is it
uh-huh
uh-huh
yeah
yeah
yeah i love it i'm just it's a lot of work though i'll tell you
what fixing it up or keeping it up yeah yeah
keeping it up and uh i've decided that i was going to try to do my own yard this year so i've
uh-huh
oh i've you know it takes me three days like come home one afternoon and mow and one day edge and another day weed eat and then my stupid magnolia tree is dropping leaves and the raking and the
yeah
yep
yep
oh yeah yeah
and i thought wait a minute this is and now it's ninety five degrees almost here in Houston it's horrible but anyway so how how about your house
oh boy
yeah
so you don't want
well we have a really large house we have three kids and we bought a five bedroom house when we moved here and um it's getting to be too much too much work to keep it up
oh my goodness uh-huh
how many kids do you have
three three so we have a bedroom for everybody and then we have an extra playroom for them to pile all their toys in and an extra TV up there and the ironing board
three kids
and you're a working you're a working mom too
well yeah i that's the other thing is i was working uh full time i just started back about a year and a half ago
and um my youngest one got to be three years old and so then i went back to work and i decided after a year of being a secretary that what i really wanted to do was go back and get my master's degree
um-hum
and um so then i went to part-time work and i'm going to school part-time
and uh it's getting to be too much financially too without my full time income so we're we're just decided to put last week to put our house on the market and um get a smaller house not too small though with three kids
smaller house
oh man
so so that that was kind of a hard decision to make but i think uh i it's just been an awful lot you know financial is one thing and that's kind of concrete but also it's just
there it the house is just really big and there there's a lot of kids and a lot of space and it all gets messed up
i know i you know i can imagine gee
so and with cleaning out to you know to sell the house we're trying to clean things out in closets and the playroom and the garage and everything
and when you have this much space you don't have to be as careful about throwing stuff out you just put it in the garage or put it in the playroom or something
so it's just we just have massive stuff that you know is we just accumulated too much stuff i mean not that we have a whole bunch of things it's just little junky you know old toys
well it it
you tend to fill up what area you have you you don't have a whole you know when i moved into this house i thought oh wow because i moved here from an apartment
that's it
yeah
right right
and apartments you can't accumulate a whole lot because you just don't have room to put it
um-hum
there's no place to put it yeah
and now you know well you've got the garage you know so going to a smaller place yeah you're going to you'll find
um-hum
yeah
it's going to be great though it makes it gives you a good feeling when you've got clean out the stuff and get rid of it
you know yeah you have more control control over it it seems almost like it's taking control here
a lot of things in the garage that you know you never use you never want you know why do i keep them there's you know it's just filling up the garage
but
right
yeah yeah it's just because you have to physically go out there and go through it i guess when you
so you have to
um-hum well i kept kept things that see my children are grown and
uh-huh
uh some of the stuff you know was from when they were growing up so what you know you hate to throw it out but they don't want it and you know
right
but i'll probably keep it keep it a while but it's it's amazing how a house
yeah
get yeah
uh i don't know how you do it with your children and although i you know
it's crazy
well me i did it too but
yeah yeah
but oh it's it's a tough deal
i think well i don't i really have uh really relaxed standards about how well organized and cleaned it is i mean it has to be basically clean because
you have to be organized enough enough to know where things are to be able to find things if it gets too messy you spend your whole life going through trying to find what you need
um-hum
so i learned that it has you have to maintain a certain standard of cleanliness but i mean organization but
i i mean compared to the other mothers here on my street that don't work i mean my house is just it looks horrible compared to theirs
but i mean you have to decide what you're going to do you know if you going to
that's right
what's the most important thing yeah so that's what slides for me
that's right
you know you have to decide is the house going to run your life or are you going to run your life yeah you just
right exactly
but it is it's it's it is a lot of a lot of work
yeah and we this house was new when we bought it and it's all white walls and so we put up some wallpaper and some drapes and you know but we just never got we didn't have the money we didn't have the time to really decorate it
and i was said to my husband if we had a smaller house it wouldn't take you know hundreds of dollars to decorate one room it of
you see we did this one huge wall that we have and it was like three hundred dollars worth of wallpaper and i didn't even buy that expensiv e kind you know that it wouldn't even cost that much but it was it's a real long wall
um-hum
so if we had a smaller house everything would be smaller and it it wouldn't take well it took us two weekends to put all the wallpaper up you know
um-hum
and uh
but i have a feeling it's going to be hard
are you have you started looking for another house
uh
we have we have driven around in the neighborhood we don't want our children to have to change s chools we want to try and stay in the same school area so we've driven around the neighborhood and we've looked from the outside but um
uh-huh
oh
i still trying to find time to get this house this weekend we're going to finish up the garage and we're going to do you know i have a few other things i need to do here and then after that i hope
that this house will be good enough for people to come through and look at it and then i want to start going to some open houses and
um-hum
and um you know look at some
but i've talked a lot with our realtor about it and she assured me we could get you know a four bedroom house in the price range that we want
in that area she said you're not going to like it as much as this one i said yeah no kidding
well uh well are prices holding you know you be able to get what you've got in that house you think
but
um yeah for this house it's just in this area of Plano it seems the the houses are moving really quickly they said my realtor said about three to six months and maybe closer to the three months because we live
half a block from the elementary school
oh that's a real plus um-hum
so that's real nice yeah
and it is five bedrooms she said you you it's really hard to find that and most places places have four and there are people that really want five so that's another plus so it might be closer to three months
and you know we'll be if we're real lucky we won't lose any money you know we'll we'll be able it's mostly the closing costs that are going to
um-hum
that you we can we'll be be uh asking for more than we bought the house for three years ago but the closing costs are going to eat out just about all of it so
so maybe you can get enough to cover that
yeah then we'll feel really we'll feel good about it
so are you you you you're basically going to have to sell that one before you can
so
before we can look too much yeah
or commit to something else anyway
right that's what that's what our realtor wants to do i've talked to some other people who have put contingencies on their houses
uh-huh
and um but our our realtor just doesn't really like to do that she doesn't even want me to go out and look and fall in love with something until you know i yeah
oh really i would have thought you know at least go and start looking at least to know
well i'm going to i'm going to i'm going to tell her you know when i have
the time that's the hard thing i have finals right now because i'm taking two classes i have finals and papers and stuff so in um two weeks from now i should be pretty well set
and uh i'm going to go out there and look i'm going to tell her i i want to know i want to have a feeling before i sign saying i'm going to sell this house i have to see what exactly it is that we're going to be moving into
um-hum
um-hum
um-hum
so but i trust her pretty much in that
oh
yeah
you know she knows what we're looking for and she knows what's out there so
yeah
so how about in Houston how is it down there
well
well i think uh you know i think uh real estate houses are uh it's
it's selling much better than than it than than they did i think new homes new homes in certain areas uh you know are are are doing very well uh and i think uh
is it getting better
um-hum
um-hum
when i bought this house was actually it's be in May it'll be five years and uh
um-hum
this was uh a foreclosure
a foreclosure foreclosure and uh so i mean it was had had been pretty bad in this area for for awhile
oh yeah
um-hum
right
and and uh i guess over the past year it sort of i got my uh the appraisal you know the thing you get for what they're base your taxes on
uh-huh uh-huh
and it's gone up from it went down from what i bought it for and then and now it's come back up
oh
come back up oh good yeah
yeah well but then again i i didn't care if it went down as long as i don't want to sell it because then i have my taxes are going to be less but
right
that's true i didn't think about that that's right
yeah but uh but you can tell by just riding around my neighborhood
um-hum
uh when i bought when i like i say when i bought this house there was oh just many many homes for sale and uh now uh
um-hum
you don't see quite as many and i and there's a lot of people like i just put a new roof on my house and repainted the outside and uh about a three or four weeks
uh-huh
uh-huh
