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Working on another story for our sellers' section. This one is about when sellers "hit the wall" -- the initial excitement of having their house for sale collides with keeping the home Martha Stewart perfect, potential buyers looking through the closets, beginning to worry the house will never sell, etc.
Especially now, with longer Days on Market in many areas, sellers eventually wear down mentally.
So, my question to agents and/or consumers who have sold is what do you tell you clients or yourself to get through the emotional roller coaster that can be selling a home.
I won't use anyone's comments without their personal permission, so l look forward to hearing from those in the trenches.
Location: Halfway between Number 4 Privet Drive and Forks, WA
1,516 posts, read 4,590,742 times
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Rick,
When you get these answers, please let me know!
I am a VERY frustrated home seller, and I can conclude that getting up early each day to straighten the house, get 2 small children off to daycare, and be at work by 8 am is mentally (and physically) exhausting. Especially when you might get one showing a week (if you're lucky), it hardly seems worth the hassle....
We've been doing this same routine going on 7 months now!
Mine helped me find a handyman, was complementary about the way the house looked, called in the troops when I was having trouble finding help to move, and actually gave me a hand herself. She also called to check on me when the buyers were driving me crazy with their petty requests, was a bulldog about the details of the contract, rescued me when my car broke down the week before closing, and had an uncanny sense to know when I really didn't want to know about the bickering going on between the buyer's agent and herself, at least in any detail.
It also helped that she had years of experience, she had once lived in my neighborhood, and knew who to market the home to.
Having an ice-cold attorney helped shore up the deal.
My house went under contract in about three weeks, sold on schedule, for what I expected to get out of it...all in the state of Florida, this past spring.
I'm so glad to have it over with. What a nightmare, regardless.
Wow - we just haven't gone through the rollercoaster ride so much except the first sale of our first home as a couple 9 years ago. We put it on the market expecting it to be there for a couple of months...it sold the same afternoon and suddenly we had nowhere to go. We accepted their offer but they weren't preapproved, so we left the open house for 2 days later standing. This was sort of a vague plan in our heads because husband's mother was ill and we were going to move her in with us (in retrospect, why didn't we just put in an elevator? So much easier...but I digress). Mom fell the morning before the open house at 2 o'clock and broke her hip...the Realtor cleaned our house for us. The original deal went through in the end.
We had to hurry and find a house - our Realtor kept us sane. We found one that worked - my husband liked it, I didn't (still don't and we moved from there 6 years ago!). The inspection came back HORRIBLE - to make it worse, these were personal friends of ours AND the Realtors. She was absolute diplomacy in motion. We were on more of an emotional rollercoaster than anything else....and then the seller balled up on some things and we were out in the cold again....and Mom was going to be released from the hospital. Oh dear, it was horrible....but the Realtor negotiated her way through this and kept everyone happy, even paying for the home warranty out of her own pocket and meeting construction workers when I couldn't. We just kept telling each other, "this too shall pass"....
I cannot imagine the stress of having a house on the market for months on end and never really knowing when it will show. I'll be interested to see people's remarks on this, although we just bought our final house in this lifetime. After 4 moves in 2 years, stick a fork in me...I'm done.
You need to be mentally and emotionally prepared before you put the property on the Market. Price it within 5% of the market value. Otherwise,it will sit for a while,you will expect people to come and go. The experienced realtor is very important in dealing with frustrations.
Our house has been on the market since July, with no great leads yet.
I gave warning of leaving my job in november, hoping to leave March/April; my husband did as well.
Now, like the previous poster, we have 2 small children, in a 3400 sq ft house. Kept it near perfect for barely any showings for 8 months by then. Our hours were long, and pleasant times were few. We were about at our wit's end.
And we said, scr%w it. Gave our final notice to leave March 19th, with no evidence of interest. Found a fairly inexpensive rental home in our new location.
Realized between small pay increases, putting IRA and charitable contributions on hold, and lower utilities because of an empty house, we were actually doing better financially in our new location. Now, I DON'T CARE HOW DIRTY MY HOUSE IS!!! Isn't it a relief?
And, 3 months later, our house down south still sits empty. But, Our sanity and family life has been saved!!
(PS- because my investment guy is actually doing his job, my IRA is going up higher every month then ever before, without taking out some from my paycheck!!)
I've already hit the wall a couple times and I'm still reeling from the concussion. We have a whine and cheese party almost every day and the quality of our life has gone way downhill. We worked our butts off to be able to retire at 50 but we can't retire till we sell this darn house! All of our stuff has been packed for more than a year. We can't cook or really use our house for anything because we might make a mess. We are so tired of cleaning and cleaning for nothing. We are just tired. Tired of our lives being on hold.
Then to top it off, we had a 5yr balloon mortgage. It gave us more than a year to sell the house. When we took it out, the market was good. It would never have taken that long to sell! So now we have to pay to refinance and we had to get a new appraisal. The icing on the cake is the value of our home is dropping.
It's not our realtor's fault. There are 3 other homes for sale in our neighborhood, 1 FSBO and 2 with realtors. None have sold. I kept wondering what was wrong, it's a beautiful neighborhood, zero crime, great schools, old growth trees, and waterfront. Most of the homes are more expensive than mine and some even have elevators. A local mortgage broker finally explained what happened. A local home builder built several hundred spec homes, couldn't sell and went bankrupt. The homes were put on the market for next to nothing and have been selling slowly. But they are dropping the value of my home. People are picking up these spec homes for 135K for 3500sf. It's a deal but they are mighty ugly! So we are guessing nothing will sell till those homes are all gone and off the market for at least 6 months. Who knows how long this will take. So I am just stuck!
yellowsnow - I feel your pain!!! I am so tired of my life being on hold too! I am tired of cleaning before I go to work and living in a model home. I am tired of wanting to go get something to use only to remember that it is packed and in storage a mile away. I am tired of having a top realtor that never checks in to give me market updates. I am tired of the nothingness. I absolutely love to bake and cook and I don't because either my stuff is packed up or I don't dare dirty the kitchen.
We even went so far as to plant one of those Saint statues in our yard!! NOTHING! Now I guess that in addition to not being able to sell a house we don't pray correctly to the statue since it isn't working.
If I ever sell the house I might just become a permanent renter and to hell with the taxman. I don't ever want to be in this position again. However, I would LOVE to be a buyer for a change!
yellowsnow - I feel your pain!!! I am so tired of my life being on hold too! I am tired of cleaning before I go to work and living in a model home. I am tired of wanting to go get something to use only to remember that it is packed and in storage a mile away. I am tired of having a top realtor that never checks in to give me market updates. I am tired of the nothingness. I absolutely love to bake and cook and I don't because either my stuff is packed up or I don't dare dirty the kitchen.
We even went so far as to plant one of those Saint statues in our yard!! NOTHING! Now I guess that in addition to not being able to sell a house we don't pray correctly to the statue since it isn't working.
If I ever sell the house I might just become a permanent renter and to hell with the taxman. I don't ever want to be in this position again. However, I would LOVE to be a buyer for a change!
Wow, this vent sure made me feel better. Thanks
My mom bought me a saint too! She is mailing it to me! It had better work because 1 more winter here will probably kill me!
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