The "not for sale" made me think of this...

Spider is our house, some of us have been living there for a long time, some of us just moved in. We really enjoy our house, but it needs work... We've had it appraised and it has come in a range, from $80000-$130000. Yes, that's a low price for a house in today's market, but you see, this house still needs quite a bit of renovations, it's age is starting to show...

The thing is, if we move out we have to find somewhere else to live, and houses in our area have gotten so expensive that it would be hard to find one with as much potential for the same price...

Lately, one of our rich neighbours has been around, he's interested in buying our house... while we were in the backyard doing some yard work, he knocked at our door and said he'd take it off our hands at top dollar, $130000...

Well, you see, it would be nice to have that money, but since much of our renovations have just started, the housing market in this area is just starting to heat up, and our other neighbour (who's home also needs work) offered to combine our efforts on renovations...

We could sell the house now, make a bit of profit... but we are handymen, we can renovate the house ourselves, and over time were can increase it's value without hiring someone else to do the work. If we worked hard, and spent time improving it we probably could sell it for much more once it's complete.. for example we have 43 new windows and 101 new roof shingles coming in the next few weeks, the government might be helping the city pay for the paving of our street. We also will be digging some holes to install a Geothermal heating system.

I think our neighbour knows this, and that's why he wants to buy it before the work is done, and renovate it himself...

So a question to ask ourselves, do we want to sell our home now for $130000, or do we want spend some time renovating, and sell it for a lot more in a month or two?

We live here, if our rich neighbour wants it and we have to move out, then he'll need to offer us a good good premium above the high value range.