When Johnie's first Kentucky job interview was scheduled in January, we called our realtor. We 'owned' our house in that we paid a bank every month for the privilege to live there and fix anything that broke. All we knew about the housing market was what we heard other people say. Or picked up from a few brief seconds of television news doing a segment on the current state of the housing market as we were changing the channel. We gathered it was bad.
I had nightmares of finding a dream job, a dream situation, in Kentucky only to learn there would be no way we could afford to get out of our mortgage in Wichita. If there was bad news, I wanted it up front.
Our realtor came over a couple evenings after the call to get reacquainted with the house he helped us buy four years earlier. He graciously complimented our upgrades to the kitchen and bathroom, then delivered the news. While not having a driveway (see previous post) hurt us, our house was in a good price range. Our upgrades increased the value of our home. And he thought he could sell the house quickly if we were flexible on the 'profit' we would make.
Profit, schmofit - I was excited. The news was much better than I thought.
So, when we accepted a position in April, I eagerly embarked on the house selling process for the first time. We called our realtor back over. This visit was all business. Crowded bookcases, workout equipment in the office, and a small crack in the dining room wall, not even noticed in the initial visit, were glaring obstacles to a quick sale now.
I took copious notes on all of his advice and we set to work.
We rearranged furniture, applied color-match paint, recruited a good friend to finally patch the wall, decluttered shelves and organized storage. Down on our hands and knees, we scrubbed the concrete floor in our unfinished basement (another project that had been delayed for years).
I read a book about staging a house for maximum results. From what I gathered, I would need to make the house look like some one could live there, but that no one actually did live there, all while trying to live there. In practice, it felt like living in a huge hotel suite that I had to check out of every morning in case another guest needed to check in. And, each morning, I served as housekeeping to prepare the suite for the next guest. Not pleasant.
I wanted potential buyers to feel relaxed when they walked in, so I bought and used alcoholic scents and flavors in air fresheners and refreshments. I even employed my writing skills, per a suggestion from the book, to help buyers see the beauty and potential of our home in a brief essay by pointing out all the things we loved and what we had planned for the house if we weren't moving.
I learned that a house saw the most traffic in the first two weeks on the market and I was ready to welcome the masses through my front door.
I envisioned multiple showings each day of our house's first week on the market. By week's end, at least two sweet young couples would be in love with the house and engaged in a bidding war to make our home their own. Johnie and I would decide who to sell the house to based on their story - based on who we felt would love and appreciate and care for our nearly century old house as much as we did.
Then I could go back to actually enjoying my home in our last days together. At the closing, we would hug the new owners and cry as they promised to love and care for our home.
When the first day passed with no activity, I wasn't discouraged. We weren't even listed on the online sites yet. Day two, day three, day four, day five... all nothing. My anxiety increased as my patience wore thin.
Both our first and second week brought absolutely no showings. I'm not good at math, but I didn't like the result of dividing 'zero' as time went on.
The house I loved, the house I wanted to take with me to Kentucky, sat ignored. Our moving date came nearer and nearer.
I began envisioning defaulting on our loan in the coming months, having our house foreclosed and our credit wrecked, and permanently moving in with my mom.
A month later we decided to leave almost all of our belongings in our unsold, un-shown home to begin our life in Kentucky.
Living at our friends' house in Kentucky that first month, I secretly wondered if I would ever live in my own home again. I wondered how many months or years (they do fall in the best friend category) they would tolerate our camping in their guest bedroom. How the awkward 'we really can't keep you anymore' conversation would go, and then how long we would have as we traveled to each of our other friends' and families homes to inhabit until, in turn, we were kicked out of them all.
In reality, we were able to successfully (successful is a relative term) sell and close on our house on July 14th to the second couple who looked at it, less than three months after putting it on the market. That sounds much more rosy and comfortable than it actually was.
It actually was one of the most emotional and stressful things I have ever done. I'm not sure I've ever felt more ignorant, vulnerable, cheated, ridiculous and embarrassed in my entire life. More on that later.
