Selling your home is a big decision. Sometimes you have to do it, perhaps for a job change, marital change, or retirement. Sometimes you want to do it, perhaps you have a growing family that needs more space. When you decide to sell, it’s because for whatever reason it makes more sense to not have the house at this point in your life than it does to have it.
But it’s not just a house, or a property, is it. It’s where you’ve spent the past 5, 10, 20 or more years, through all kinds of life changes and family changes and growing and learning and happiness and grief. It’s where you’ve slept, cooked, laughed, cried. It’s sheltered you from storms, protected you from harm, greeted you with safe and open arms time and again when you’ve come home from the brutal outside world. Yet, you’ve decided, challenging though it was: It’s time, without a doubt, to sell.
Well get ready, because what happens next is the real test of your resolve.
First, you meet with real estate agents who may or may not present you with flashy graphs about your local market, doomsday reports about home sale prices, and suggestions (critiques) about your home and what you should change about it to make it the most desirable home in the area to buyers. Then the agents spout suggested list prices at you. Low prices that shock and mortify you and make you hate them and think that buyers are nothing but thieves trying to suck the lifeblood out of you and get all they can for the very least amount possible. And these agents? They don’t care a whit about you, do they. They see your home as just a tool for their own greedy gains. They only want a quick and painless sale so they can move onto the next. Vultures, they are, every last one of them.
Come on, you know you feel this way. It’s only natural, because this is your home we’re talking about. Are the agents vultures? Of course not. They have a job to do, which is why you hire them. Are buyers thieves? No, you were a buyer at one time, yourself. That’s how you ended up with the home you’re now selling! And you may be a buyer again, perhaps right now, or a while from now. You know, deep down inside, that you need these people. The agents, the buyers. That they are necessary for you to accomplish your goal. But that doesn’t make you like them any better, and really, that’s ok.
So you discuss things with whomever you want to discuss them – friends, family, Facebook. You choose your agent and your list price, a sign goes up in your yard and your house is officially on the market.
Then you start getting calls, either from your agent or, if you’ve requested direct contact, from other agents who have buyers interested in seeing your home. You keep things clean and neat and during viewings you make sure everyone is out of the house, even pets. What a pain, huh? You expect to get calls right away with their offers, aren’t they smart enough to see how wonderful your home is? Don’t they know how lucky they would be to live there? But, you don’t hear from them, not even a thank you note for your troubles, and your agent tells you the reason is they had wanted something larger, or smaller, or closer to town, or with carpets instead of wood floors, or wood floors instead of carpets ….
This goes on for a while. Then, one day, you’re packing everyone up and leaving the house not for a first viewing, but for a second viewing by those folks who were here just last week. They want to come back and take another look, your agent says, so make sure the place is in tip top shape. Hmmm, you think, maybe that agent finally managed to find some smart people who see the same thing in my house as I did when I first saw it. Then, that night, or perhaps a few days after, your agent calls you. Someone wants to buy your home. It’s those people who came to see it twice, the second time they brought their whole family and took measurements, and then their agent faxed in an offer. It’s for x amount of dollars, not quite what you expected, but after some negotiating back and forth you are offered an amount you can live with, given the market. An amount that, after legal and agency fees and taxes, will hopefully pay off your remaining home loan and leave you with some money left over.
Ok! Maybe this whole house sale thing will work after all, eh? But it’s not over yet. Because after attorney review, a few days in which your attorney exchanges letters with the buyer’s attorney and calls or emails you a few times, then come the inspections. Those buyers, the ones you thought were so smart, have hired at their own expense a professional to come in and inspect every nook and cranny of your home and then write a report about everything they think is wrong with it. You see the report, and WHAT?! Who do these people think they are? My shelves are not loose, they’re fine. My roof is not old, it has never once leaked! I’m not making a single one of these changes, not with the price these people are stealing my house for!
You get through it. Somehow. The buyers reduce their requests to just the necessary things. And you decide ok, I’ll fix this and that, or I’ll give them x amount of dollars at closing (if we ever get there, sheesh!) so they can fix it themselves. Your attorney tells you the inspection contingencies are met. Your agent tells you that you’re one step closer to closing. You make arrangements for your next home, or to move everything out of the home you’re selling. Then you have your other inspections – septic and well, if you have them, fire and certificate of occupancy. Your agent lets you know which ones you need, and you get them done.
Then, one day, all the inspections are complete and your agent tells you the buyers have their mortgage commitment letter. It came in time! There is, after all, a deadline for it in your sales contract. Why take your house off the market and go through negotiations and inspections if they can’t get their mortgage, right? Ugh! But they have it, all is good, and then within a few days, or weeks, you’re at the closing. Signing papers. Sign here, your attorney says, this means your title is clear. Sign here, this transfers your deed. Here, the buyer’s mortgage rep says, is your check.
And then you are done. You’ve sold your house. It went on for weeks, or months, or even sometimes years. You’ve laughed, you’ve cried, you’ve shaken your fist. You have considered ending the whole process and you have prayed for it all to just hurry up and be done. And you hope to never, ever have to go through it again.
And that, my dear people, is what it’s like to sell your house.
