Selling The House

This is a picture of our kitchen, with a fresh coat of paint, and new tile counter tops I made. People would ask 'whats wrong with your house?' and I would think about it and say the counter top is hideous and it needs a new roof. Now the counter top looks awesome and I will do the roof in the next couple of weeks. Plus I have been repainting everything, I will have to do some drywall work in the spare bedroom and the laundry room, but the most daunting task will be the roof. I haven't decided on asphalt or tin for roofing materials yet, I will find out the price difference tomorrow. Everyone says tin is a lot harder, but I foresee it being much easier, as it can go rite over top of the two layers of shingles already on the roof. I also think that a tin roof is great fire insurance for potential chimney fires. Most of all I am not looking forward to stripping 2+ layers of shingles in the cold, I am leaning toward the more expensive tin roofing.
We are committed to coming to Victoria to chill with the family and do some wiring for Kim this spring. We are also committed to selling this house this spring, and the sooner it goes on the market the better. Our nearest term achievable goal is April 1, which is apx the third day of spring break, which I also think is good, teachers will be off work that week, and they appear to be one of the few that still have jobs, can get mortgages, so on. As soon as the roof is done, I will be getting a lawyer together to accept offers, and an appraisal, possibly a 'Comfree' kit, and an open house on the first weekend of April. We are looking for a fast sale, at or just under market value, and then the work begins packing and selling stuff we would otherwise keep, should we not be able to sell, like the dune buggies 57 ford, blah, blah, blah. We were looking at buying a trailer to keep in storage until we buy another place. But it seems silly to sell the camper we paid $300 for, and buy a cube trailer for $3000 min, (the rusty old used horse trailers cost $3000). So when we sell, or look like we are going to sell for sure, the camper gets gutted, and filled with our stuff. Then the leaky air bag suspension on the dodge gets fixed and a Mexico style 6'high canopy gets constructed to hold more stuff. Then the overloaded truck and camper can be parked in storage or at a friends acreage until we decide what we are doing. At that point, we are hoping to be no later than June 1, papers can be left signed w the lawyer, and we are free to come to Victoria, and chill with the family for a month or two wile I do some work for Kim. Then we will do some couch surfing across Canada to Toronto, with or without the ol Dodge and trailer. We will stay in Toronto for two plus months, chill with the family, look at real estate, do some basement renovations, and then head to Mexico for Nov at the latest. That is one probable scenario, the most ideal, and most likely in our mind. The other being that we don't get any interest in this place... I expect we can find someone trusted to leave keys with and show our house for us for the month of June, and come to Victoria for that month, as we haven't been in over a year, and working for Kim is always fun. Then a regrouping and some pressure sales tactics would be in order for July Aug on the house. But the plans are very unclear from there, I am not sure where we would work the Toronto/Mexico trips in, as Michelle has been offered a full time teaching job at an awesome school in Sept, that sounds comical, hopefully she has time to write about it. I expect that the house would remain for sale, through the school year but with less open houses and such, as everything will be covered in snow and I doubt there would be much for buyers over the winter. We won't be thinking that way however, we believe there is definitely a demand out there from fixed income/retired individuals + for an inexpensive home in a quiet community, and there should be no problem selling for under $100k at or below appraised value.
We are not listing with a real estate agent because I have not heard one success story out here from using them. Because of our location, they don't want to come out and show the place, or make any effort. People have sold their own place on Kijiji wile real estate agents did nothing, and they still had to pay agent commissions because of their contracts. I think it is worth wile to have the house posted in the Comfree paper, as that gets distributed everywhere, although it is mostly higher end homes in that paper, the "sold" stamps are only on the lower end homes, as far as I can see.