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Getting ready to show a house to perfect strangers is a difficult task. We listed the house on forsalebyowner.com and in the real estate section of washingtonpost.com on Tuesday. Since then, we've been thinking of possible minor improvements to raise the general feel of the house to potential buyers. Today, I fixed some window trim in the basement, mowed the lawn, and Stephanie and I (and ET) swapped the upstairs office with one of the single beds in our basement spare room. It's a running joke now, but we've seen several home improvement / house selling shows on television that encourage sellers to make homes' rooms look like their intended purpose. Thus, for us, that meant the upstairs office should be turned back into a bedroom, and the less appealing basement spare room became the office.

We have a real estate agent coming tomorrow to "preview" the house. I'm not sure what her motive is, but I have guessed either talking us out of doing a for sale by owner arrangement, or that she has a potential buyer but wants to know what type of buyers' agent commission we are willing to pay. Regardless, her appointment to see the house was the impetus we needed to clean things up.

We're competitively priced so now we just have to hope our marketing tools start working their magic.