We are in contract!

Paying a little bit more than I expected, but we are in contract. Whee!
The transaction ended up with an agent doing dual-agency. A bit strange. I felt that, while the agent tried to be as impartial as possible, he did seem to favor the seller a bit. The warnings are true. Either way, I feel we paid a fair price for the house, even though, of course, I would have preferred to pay less.

I got bids from various roofing companies. Composite asphalt shingles are not as expensive as I feared (and we have a very simple roof, too). All bids came in clearly under $9000. But boy, so many new words to learn (gables, eves, ridge, valleys, ...), venting approaches to consider (eve venting, ridge venting, eye brow vents, and how that all compares to the pre-existing gable vents), material options to look at (do I care what color my roof is going to be? I never really thought about that. Grey, I guess...).

We'll get the new roof installed after close of escrow, probably in June.

The financing is making its way past the underwriters, I need to start looking for home insurance.

Meanwhile we are getting our house ready to go on the market. Richard is giving us good guidance and advice. New carpet will be installed next week downstairs. We're hoping we have everything ready, so we can go on the market by the end of next week. Hordes of unwashed buyers will run down the place, we will have multiple offers in the first 24 hours, ... oh wait, the boom times are over. Average time on the market these days is about 45 days. Houses either sell in the first 3-4 weeks, or it takes 3 months. There seem to be very few inbetween. I'm hoping we are in the first group. If everything looks good, the house is priced right, we should be. However, we'll know it only once we are on the market. Oh, the joy.