Adventures in House Selling

If you’ve never bought or sold a house, you have no idea of the fun in store for you.  In our case, we’re selling one and buying another (hopefully).  First comes the decision to sell and move.  This is the hardest part for me since I detest moving.  When I initially moved in with my husband, I told him I might have one more move in me, but that would pretty much be it.  Of course, times and needs change so your mindset needs to change too.  

The uninitiated might think the next step is just call a realtor and it’s over.  Wrong.  The next step is to clean your house.  I don’t mean vacuum and dust, I mean go through all your stuff and start two piles:  (1) stuff to donate somewhere or otherwise get rid of; and (2) stuff you want to keep but can be packed away for a while.  This is called decluttering and is harder than you think until you’ve been through it a few times.  A good rule of thumb is to consider whether you’ve used any particular item within the past year.  If the answer is “no”, then you can probably get rid of it.  

After the decluttering, you’ll need to consider all those little jobs that you just never seemed to get to before – changing the washer on the kitchen faucet, painting the bathroom, cleaning out the shed or garage, replacing ripped screens, etc.  Then, of course, you have to really clean like you haven’t cleaned in a long while.  The windows need washing, the exterior of the home may need washing or even paint, steam-clean the carpets, cut the grass and make sure the gardens are weed free, and the list goes on.  In our case, there was fix the ramp into the shop and paint the shed, too.  We also made time to have a yard sale and sold off a lot of junk…I mean valuable stuff…that was hanging around.  Double bonus here is decluttering and making money at it!  

Now you’re ready to call a realtor.  Do your homework and figure out who you would like to represent you and will give you the best service.  Just remember:  the one with the most signs out is not necessarily the best at actually selling.  S/he may be simply good at listing properties, but have little experience at finding buyers and closing the deal, or alternatively, s/he may simply be too busy listing to spend any time working at selling.  

The realtor will come with forms, a contract, and a camera.  After the necessary paperwork where you contract with them to represent you and agree to a certain selling price and commission fee, you need to decide what you’re going to include with the house when you sell it.  Are you taking the window coverings?  How about the stove, or the beer fridge in the man-room (aka garage)?  The appliances are always good to exclude because they can be used as bargaining tools later when your potential purchaser wants to add them into the deal.  Our bargaining tools include the appliances (fridge, beer fridge, freezer, stove), a snooker sized pool table, a riding mower and trailer, and a snow blower.  We also have a window air conditioner that is only two years old that works well to keep the house fairly cool on hot, humid days.  

With the paperwork done, the realtor will take several pictures of your house including both exterior and interior shots.  Make sure the rooms are tidy, beds made, table not still holding your breakfast dishes, kitchen clean, bathroom sparkling and laundry not visible. Also make sure the smoke detector works and all the light bulbs work.  Soon after this your MLS listing will be posted online and your realtor should also be advertising your home locally in newspapers and real estate listing books.  

Next your realtor schedules an open house where s/he invites other realtors to attend and look through.  These are the folks that will be trying to put a new owner into your home so this is a good step.  After the realtor open house, you’ll have a public open house.  This will be advertised by your realtor and on the day of the open house, just take yourself (and the dog if you have any) out to the park for a few hours.  Your realtor will hang out at your house and hopefully lots of people will show up to look at it.  

We went a step further.  On the second week in August, the Welbeck Sawmill holds its annual wood show.  Since we live about one kilometre from the sawmill, we put out lots of open house signs and our son even had one on the back of his bicycle.  He and my husband walked over to the sawmill and advertised our open house.  I stayed at the house ready to show people through.  Over the course of the two days we had five showings.  It had rained on and off all weekend so we were (are) hopeful about the ones that came through because they are obviously die-hard woodworking hobbyists if they’re out in the pouring rain to attend the wood show.  Since our shop was originally built and set up by someone that was into woodworking, we figured those die-hards would be thrilled to see a house for sale so close to their favourite store!  

We have a lot to offer a potential buyer.  The property is pretty unique.  We have 300 feet of river frontage.  The location of the house is such that it could not actually be built where it is today if you were purchasing raw land.  The house is almost 1900 square feet, completely finished throughout, with big open main rooms thanks to the engineered trusses in the roof.  There is an acre and a half of land (approximately 212’ x 300’; or 65,600 square feet; or about the size of a football field with an extra end zone).  Aside from the house, we have a large shop, a decent sized greenhouse, a drive-shed (think garage with dirt floor and no door), and a garden shed with a loft and attached wood storage area.  We’re surrounded by mature trees and our driveway meanders through the trees so that the house is invisible from the road.  In fact, you can only see one little spot near our fire-pit from the bridge over the river.  So there’s loads of privacy.  Sure, we have neighbours, but they’re very few and only a couple are there all year round.  Mostly the neighbouring places are owned as cottages and the owners only appear now and then throughout the year.  Deer, otter, wild turkeys, migratory ducks, geese, great blue herons, belted kingfishers, various woodpeckers, blue jays, cardinals and hummingbirds, as well as robins, chickadees, sparrows, junkos and more make their way through and around the property regularly.  On a quiet night you can hear the coyotes.  In early spring you hear the peepers (little frogs) and of course the ever-present running of the river.  

So now we’re playing the waiting game.  People are looking through the house on occasion and one day soon someone will fall in love with it.  We love it, but our needs have changed for now. 

The Love/Hate Relationship

How is it that we can love something at the same time as we hate it? 

Everyone has these types of “relationships” in their lives.  I know I do.  It’s not a matter of loving to hate something or hating that you love something.  It’s purely that you love and hate at the same time. 

For me it’s computers for one thing.  I have loved computers since I first got my hands on one at the young age of eight or so.  That was back in the early ‘70s and the computer in question belonged to “Uncle Robin”, not my own uncle but rather the uncle of a much older cousin’s wife.  He lived in the basement of their house and was kind of what would be called a geek or nerd today.  It didn’t matter to me because he showed me how to play chess on it.  Each time we’d visit their home, I’d inevitably make my way into the basement and ask Uncle Robin to set up the chess.  I’m not sure who was prouder the first time I beat the machine.  I couldn’t even begin to tell you what kind of computer it was, possibly an old (state-of-the-art at the time) Commodore 64 or something, but I was in love. 

As I ascended into the teen years, I had several part-time jobs and three of them involved spending time on computers.  My love affair continued and I absorbed everything I could.  Some friends in high school had their own and even spent time chatting via the internet, making me more convinced that I wanted one.  Mind you, it was a vastly different internet than we know today.  There was no such thing as the world wide web back in 1980. 

It wasn’t until I was in my second real job after high school that I finally started using a computer in my daily life.  While I still absolutely love them, now I learned to hate as well.  I quickly learned – the hard way – that a computer crash can be a devastating thing.  I also quickly learned the value of backing things up. 

Since those early days of computers on every desk and the advent of the home pc, the world wide web came along, as well as ever smaller computers like laptops and netbooks.  I still love them to death, but I hate some of their issues.  I’ve had hard drives crash, busted keyboards, burnt out power supplies, dead cooling fans, litters of dead mice, and a variety of other issues which are pretty unexplained.  For example, I love laptops for their portability, but I find that they start getting too hot.  Literally too hot.  I’ve tried various remedies from replacing internal fans to elevating the laptop and putting external fans under it.  When this happened with my first laptop when it was about two years old, my husband got me a new one and adopted the old one for himself. 

Sure enough, within a couple of years my “new” laptop was getting too hot to handle.  Meanwhile, the old one that my husband had adopted was working fine.  He keeps it powered on all the time and never has a problem with it.  I turn mine off whenever I ‘m not using it, but it still gets hot when I am.  We can’t figure it out.  Maybe it’s me.  Perhaps I’ve got too much excess electrical impulses running through me.  For whatever reason, it soon makes me hate the laptops. 

Another love/hate I have is moving.  We moved so much when I was a kid that I’m willing to wager we used the same boxes every time.  It seemed like we’d just get settled in a place and out would come the boxes and we’d move again.  I hated it.  Aside from the whole process, there’s the added bonus of being the “new kid” at some new school every few months.  We weren’t military and my dad’s work wasn’t transferring him around.  Perhaps it was bad choices.  I don’t know, but I do know that I detest moving. 

However, as I’ve gotten older, even though I still hate the process, I do love the possibilities that a new place represents.  Going to a new place presents a whole new blank canvas for my creative juices.  Not only that, but it’s something I’ve come to consider as an adventure; a kind of leap into the unknown.  When we made the move to our current location in the country on a quiet little river, I was happy to paint murals on our unborn baby’s walls, create happy spaces in our own room and the guest room, and to turn the basement – which was dark as a dungeon – into a light and lovely space. 

When my husband first broached the subject of selling this house and relocating, I was adamantly opposed.  After all, I hate moving.  But, smart man that he is, he’s learned that the best way to convince me of something is to have all his arguments prepared well ahead of time.  Personal considerations aside here, it would be a really good move for our son if we moved into town.  Our little neighbourhood is only us and two older couples, only one of which we see with any regularity.  There are no children of any age around and he suffers loneliness with being an only child.  Of course, my husband knows I’d do anything for our son so he won that discussion fairly easily. 

Say what you want about me, but when I endorse an idea, I endorse it fully as if I came up with it myself in the first place.  And having made the decision to move, I’m looking forward to the adventure.  I can’t wait to see what our as yet unfound new home will inspire in the way of decorating ideas.  I can’t wait for my son to be running next door to play with his new friends or to bring them home and play in our own yard.  I hate having boxes invading my home.  I hate them.  But soon enough they’ll be gone and our next adventure will be starting.  I love that. 

For now, though, it’s a beautiful day outside.  The computer can sit for a while and the boxes can wait.  I’m going out to play with my son.