The Back Story

I've had many people wondering what is going on in the Slayton Household. Well here's a synopsis.

In late July my wife and I decided we had outgrown our current home. We currently live in a 3 bedroom house with no basement and I run my business from the 3rd bedroom.

The problem with this is we have a boy and a girl who are at the age that they need their own rooms and I'd love to have a basement to store our non-everyday items instead of storing them up in the trusses of our attic. So we got the house in shape, listed it, and started looking for our new home. Out of all that we saw, there were two houses we put bids on.

The first house was gorgeous, but once we thought about it, didn't really meet our needs (single oven, 6 person steam shower in the master bath instead of a tub). It was also at the high end of our price range leaving us no money to redo the problem areas.

The second house was a fixer-upper. Only the kitchen had been redone and the basement wasn't finished. We looked at the comps and found that it was priced $80,000 more than the house that sold two doors down (and had been updated with a finished basement). So we put a realistic bid on the house which the owners were offended at. It turns out the Realtor (and I use that term loosely), didn't do a market analysis before listing the house. She had sold a house in a different neighborhood and thought theirs was nicer so should be listed for $67,000 more than what that other house sold for (I can't make this stuff up).

In the meantime, our house sold with a final closing date of December 14th. Facing the prospect of being homeless, my wife and I were lying in bed at 12:30 am stressing over what to do and chatting about options when the thought occurred to us. Why not leave for a couple months until more houses are on the market? We had been saving for 3 years to take the kids to Europe ever since my parents had gifted us miles to use to travel anywhere in the world. We could also use the lack of housing expenses in the US to help pay for our trip.

We had originally thought about being away for 2 months, but when we chatted with the school, it turned out that we'd have to re-enroll them (and have to prove we were in district for both the elementary and junior high). Instead we decided to cut our trip down to five weeks so that we can just reactivate them.

Coincidentally, I will be celebrating the tenth anniversary of my business in Rome. The field I chose was one where I would be my own boss and have the ability to take time with my family, so I'm doubly blessed to be able to do this.

That said, I will be working in the evenings and my assistant will still be in Naperville to take care of anything that needs a local person.