Citing real estate website Trulia, Logan discovered that the average price reduction in St. Louis (city) is 8%. Of all properties listed in St. Louis, 29% had at least one price reduction.

This, among many reasons, is why I’m glad I have Kevin Cottrell selling our house. He put together an amazingly detailed market analysis and we ended up pricing our house in such a way that we’ve had an almost non-stop stream of people coming to view the property (which, by the way, has it’s own website and Twitter account) since listing.

What did Kevin have to say about this article? Well, that most agents can’t price houses.

Glad we have one who can.

There’s the obvious physical part – packing, painting, preparing – but the mental part is just as difficult. It’s hard for me to wrap my brain around leaving the house where I proposed to my wife (while she was waking up from a nap. Heh). Where we brought our daughter home from the hospital. Where we have so many great memories, all in 3 short years.

At the same time, though, I’m really excited about moving on to a bigger home that can actually accommodate my pack rat tendencies and piles of, well, stuff. And believe me, I have piles. I’m also looking forward to new home improvement challenges – I’ve done an awful lot to this house, and I finally feel comfortable with taking on larger projects and not screwing them up.

Plus, I’ll be a short walk away from Schlafly Bottleworks.

The biggest facepalm moment came yesterday: we finally started to update our kitchen, fully realizing that we’ll only get to enjoy it for the next (hopefully) two months or so until it sells. We ripped out the old butcher block countertops and replaced them with really nice new laminate counters. We also have a brand new drop ceiling in the basement room that my dad and I painstakingly framed in and I drywalled to help me pass the time when Rebecca was in the hospital on bedrest. It’s a knockout space that I was going to use for an office/media room, but now will need to be repurposed for whatever the new owners want.

My house craves attention

The coolest thing I’m doing is using social media tools to drum up interest in the property, pre-listing. I’m posing as the house itself on Posterous, where 7040 Lansdowne has a blog about being sold (acting as a proxy, I’m typing up what the house wants to say). The house also has a Facebook fan page (which I’ve quickly abandoned – nobody is looking for houses on Facebook) and a pretty cool Twitter account.

You can find my attention-whoring house here:

• 7040 Lansdowne (Posterous)
• Twitter
• Flickr (Photoset)