Buying or Selling A House? Listen Up

We were selling our house and buying someone else’s. And I was doing hand-to-hand combat with the universe…

We’ve tried selling our house before.  It’s been on the market (the really lousy, bottomed out housing market) 3 out of the last 4 years.  No one even came to see the house the first time.  The second time, two couples and one buyer who offered less money than we thought it was worth showed up.  Not a lot of activity which we put down to the slump in housing sales.

We were wrong.  Turns out that the first two times we put the house on the market, I wasn’t listening very well.  The universe kept whispering a single word, “…stay.”

This year, there were a lot of showings – a lot of cleaning, scrubbing, trimming, leaving to allow prospects to wander through our private paradise and figure out just how much less they could get it for.  This time, buyers, galore.

In the span of just 8 weeks I packed and unpacked our 4 bedroom, 2 office, 2 ½ bath home 3 times.  The only room not packed up was the kitchen.  I lost 12 pounds doing it – running up and down 2 flights of stairs with the accumulated detritus of our lives — clothing, books, photographs, artwork, memories and our lives in boxes of varying sizes.

We sold the house three times in 2 months, found a place to buy, three times in two months.  Packed up our lives, said good bye to the earth, the sky, the trees, the place that we love, three times.

Each time, just days before closing, something happened to the sale.  A buyer’s buyer lost her mortgage.  A buyer fell short of the funding needed to buy the house and wanted us to subsidize their move with a $15,000 seller’s assist.  This most recent sale collapsed 7 days before we were to move when the buyer’s home inspection team found significant issues and required remediation.

Septic, structure, radon…they said.  Shell out $30,000 or the deal is off…they said.

The universe wasn’t whispering anymore.  It was shouting. “Stay!”

This time, I was listening.  It is done.   We will not be moving.  This is where I will die.  The joy, the peace that come with that knowledge fills me up until small, slow tears slide down my cheeks.

I am home.