I’ve been in the Bay Area since May 2012, and now, we’re going to be moving back to Southern California. Wow, it still hasn’t set in. Last year in 2023, I went down to LA 6 times. Yes, we’re still in the same state, but it does get exhausting at times to travel there. We’re approaching 12 years here…my parents are getting older and it is a little hard to help them when we’re so far away. We’ve actually been thinking about moving back since last Thanksgiving, but we couldn’t really get started until after we came back from Japan. Well…we’re back, caught up with work, installed the blinds in the spa and gym rooms, and just finished our appointment with our agent.

We signed a contract with our selling agent, Susanna Wong today. She really knows her stuff. She was our buyer’s agent 11 years ago when we first bought this house, so we thought it fitting that she would help us sell it. She always gave us See’s Candies certificates during Christmas time and would answer Anson’s random questions about real estate throughout the years. She doesn’t work as much now as she wants to enjoy her family time, but she wants to make an exception for us, and she even wanted to lower her commission for us! There were some things that we thought we were going to do, but she has made some good suggestions.

Our plan was to pack everything up and put in storage and just use an air bed to squat in the house. We wanted to paint the house inside and out, replace lightbulbs, and the toilet. She is thinking that we probably don’t have to paint the whole house, just touch ups here and there on trims/cracks/baseboards/front of house, replace our old fashioned fans with regular lighting. We’ll need to do landscaping in the back, but should probably also do a little in front to make it more colorful. An HVAC guy will come to check our A/C and heating system.

We’ll bring down some personal stuff at the end of April and store it with Anson’s parents. We’ll need to buy a new couch for the family room, and can probably bring that down in our move. Our job in the next couple weeks is to de clutter the house and store things in the garage to make our place more presentable for the open house… projected timeline will be listing in mid-May and might have been sooner if not for the annual city clean up.

I think it’s sort of a shock how fast things are going. We just had our meeting with Susanna yesterday and we’re already thinking that our house will be sold be the end of next month. We have to pack, say goodbye to those we know, and not to mention that we haven’t told work that we are hoping to be remote…if it doesn’t happen, I think we are also content in taking some time off since we’ll also have to buy a place in Camarillo (did I say that was where we are hoping to move to?) We don’t want to live in the Valley because of the heat, but I’ll be able to drive to SFV to visit parents more often. So many things to still do before thinking about that though 🙂