The only thing certain is uncertainty. And uncertainty sucks.
The unknown blows. And it’s especially unnerving when so much is on the line. Such is the life of a home seller of a short sale in this market. It’s crappy enough trying to sell a home right now. With the plethora of choices out there, and less buyers than ever before since everyone and their mom is unemployed, selling in this market now is frustrating as hell. Trying to sell when you weren’t intending to sell, with a quick approaching deadline of foreclosure hanging over your head, and knowing you won’t see a dime from it, but will instead take a pretty hefty blow on your credit report: Way suckier.
Such is OUR life right now. . . .
Even though I started out on a really sour note, to your surprise perhaps, I’m not even that bitter about it. Coming to terms with moving on from the house in this way has settled in and I’m at peace with our circumstances. I’m confident that we made the best choice for us right now. I’m sure that helps with the ‘at peace’ part. We are grossly underwater in our mortgage and paying a far higher price for this house than anyone ever should have. Short selling is the best course of action for us. Cutting your losses in a situation where you purchased at the height of the market, and your property is appraised at a whopping $94,000 less just five and a half years later: staying would be beyond idiotic.
Thus, here we are, short selling this thing. We can walk away from here without being penalized or taxed and that bank can have borrowers in the property paying fair market price for it. (Just in case you weren’t sure of what a short sale actually meant.) I just wish the goddamn thing would sell! I’d gladly pack up all of our crap, and move on. It’s the stagnant feeling of imprisonment and uncertainty that drives me bonkers. The when, when, when, and even if it will sell before foreclosure happens... but most over-the-top, bonkers-driving, annoying of all, is showing your home over and over and over again. It’s as if the home already isn’t “yours” any longer, in a way. The inconvenience, lack of privacy, inability to truly plan anything, unforeseen costs, and impairment of truly living in your home, is enough to make you just want to hand the mortgage company over the deed and dip.
So, here’s the lowdown on our personal experience of short selling our home so far…..
We’ve switched realtors. Added advertisements. Reduced the price, twice five times. Dug a hole, and placed a small plastic statue of St Joseph upside down in our front yard, near the ‘for sale’ sign, and facing the street just as all of the realty web sites told us to do. Yet, house showing upon house showing, and three five open houses later- still nothing. We’ve had two promises of offers, yet for separate reasons no offers could be made. Another lady said the place needed to house both of her tables: dining room and kitchen. But, alas, there is no formal dining room in our quaint rancher. So off she went.
Another couple said the back screen door, that our wonderful yet overly hyper adopted pup destroyed, must be replaced before they’d make an offer. I can’t see someone being serious about purchasing a home yet walking away over a fifty dollar storm door? But, we told our realtor we’d replace it if they like. I’m not holding my breath that anyone nitpicking over something so insignificant and un costly is authentically serious about purchasing this house in the first place, though, obviously. (Our hunch was correct, as it turns out, since we never did hear back from them even though we agreed to meet their demands.)
We have a doctor interested in purchasing our home, who said we needed to wait for something negative to fall off from his credit report and then we’d see his offer at the end of January. He was so in love with the house that he returned several times, actually. Well, nearing the half way point of February, I’m beginning to think that ship has sailed. Disappointing, it is. Time and again, getting your hopes up, as one must know, is not so much fun. :-/
Then, finally, there was the Halleluiah moment that took place in a Wawa, of all places, after my normal Monday morning workout at the gym. As I was awaiting the creation of my specially ordered Vegetarian breakfast sandwich, (which, by the way: Seriously, Wawa? I cannot possibly be the Only Vegetarian around here that frequents your stores and would like a darn breakfast sandwich in the morning with my cup of joe. Would it kill ya to put out a few of those bagel sandwiches sans the sausage patties or the bacon? Really!??? Urr. But, I digress. As you probably realize by now I’ve got a bad habit of doing.) So, here I am in the Wawa and my cell phone alerts me that I’ve received an email from my realtor. The agent’s message says we have an offer on the house, exclamation point. “Yes”, escapes my mouth, while I think my mom is still next to me. (She’s got a terrible tendency of wandering off like a young child when out at stores together.) I soon come to realize everyone around me just assumes I’m talking to myself, probably. Not that I cared. I’m too ecstatic to care at this point. (The nightmare of showing our house is O V E R. Over! Is that the angels I hear singing, or just Michael Buble’s crooning over the radio system? It’s all over, over, over, over!!! Ahhh!) I’m over too- I’m over the moon, that is. I feel an almost physical relief in my shoulders and neck, as though a literal weight’s been lifted from my body. Looking back, I can’t believe I didn’t spill my hazelnut coffee as I skipped through the parking lot back to my truck.
Two days later, my phone alerts me again of an email from my realtor. The woman pulled her offer. Back to square one. I can’t say that I was crushed. I knew full well not to count those chicks before they hatched. But damn. She’d offered full asking price. Filled out all the paperwork, submitted it to us, and we filled it out and sent it back. Things were looking pretty good…. Her agents, in short, explained to my agent that the lady second guessed herself, had doubts, and changed her mind. And that’s the way that cookie crumbled.
More hassle of people trampling through our home, finding places to take the boys, wasting gas and money on eating out, not cooking meals at home because we’re trying to avoid the mess of pots and pans that need to be hastily cleaned up at the drop of a hat if that telephone should ring and another agent wants to come show the property within ten minutes or within the hour. I’ve become so obsessed over keeping the house sparkling, that I fear I’ve morphed into a “Mommy Dearest” with the kids. I don’t even want them to take out their finger paints, play dough, puzzles or board games. All because of the mess I’ll have to hurry and clean up in between showings. In and out we go… Back inside, we look at the clock: two hours until the next showing. What should we do? Hmm, sit down and watch tv and do NOTHING. Touch NOTHING. That’s what we’ll do. We don’t want to clean up behind those messy boys any more. I don’t want to wipe one more counter, vacuum one more carpet, or remake one more bed. We’re lounging on the sofa, and people show up a half hour early, so we rush back out. The next morning the telephone rings at 8:30, it’s the appointment scheduling center asking if so-and-so agent can come with his client in an hour to see the place. We clean the house, the boys, dress them, dress ourselves, leash the dog up out back with his bowls, leave no surface un-wiped, (yadda yadda yadda yadda yadda), get into the Jeep, take off for an hour, find breakfast to feed those hungry kids of ours, and return home in about an hour only to find out that the appointment was (yet again) another no-show. (That one really gets our goat. And it happens A Lot.)
Two weeks ago we had a man and his realtor show up unexpectedly claiming they honestly did have an appointment. My dear, and way more patient and understanding than me, husband allows them to come on in. The man loves the home so much, that he schedules a time the following weekend to bring his girlfriend back to get her input on it. Their realtor emails us after that visit to say they both like the house, only one wants it while the other wants another home they viewed. Soooo, they decide to keep looking. (Another one down.)
Presently, we’ve got a lady interested in purchasing our home after walking through it last weekend. She wants another appointment now, to bring her son with her whom she’s purchasing with. Waiting to hear how that one turns out, yet it’s becoming increasingly more difficult to hang on to the very little optimism we’ve got left.
There’s also (sigh) another open house scheduled for this coming Sunday, and we’ve just today dropped our home price by a whopping thirty seven thousand dollars since it first went on the market. The last price reduction merited a ton of new showing appointments. Our phone’s been ringing off the hook, and we’ve been ingesting more fast food, and hitting the local libraries more often, and dropping in on family to “visit” more times than I can even count any longer. I acknowledge this is all good, and I’m happy there’s interest in the house. It’s great, yet extremely tiring.
The cake topper of frustrations occurred tonight, though, when my realtor popped up out of the clear blue and frantically told me I must clean my disaster of a house for a woman who will be here in ten minutes to look at my home. In fact, the house has never been a “disaster” since we put the sucker on the market. But today I had a very good excuse for it being so disastrous. While I won’t get into too much detail, the gist is that my bitchy monthly visitor is here for a truly horrific visit, which is the reason for doing Z E R O cleaning for the past forty eight hours except for some laundry). So in a whirlwind, I’m informed that a woman saw the house today from her car and needs to see it tonight. My agent lady is like the Tasmanian Devil, whizzing from room to room, breathlessly straightening up the items that lay strewn about my tables, sofas and floors as I stand there in pain and serious confusion. Tonight, as in “right now”, my agent informs me as she hastily runs around the place putting toys away in the play room and asking me where the sheets are to the boys’ beds that I’d just washed and dried. I didn’t quite understand why it was this woman was exempt from scheduling an appointment like every other person. Or why it was that she couldn’t make it here during the four hours of open house taking place this coming Sunday. I asked questions, like, “Does she live out of state and is only here today? Why in the world must she come now!?” But, no, that didn’t appear to be the case. It appears all my agent knew was that another agent she knows well and trusts a whole bunch had told her that this buyer of hers simply HAD to view the property tonight. She tells me impulse buyers are great, and this potential buyer was one. The boys and I had just been ordering dinner online when my realtor manifested, as the killer cramps and debilitating lower back pain was too much for me to even imagine standing long enough to heat up frozen fish sticks and french fries in the oven for them to eat. Yet here I was washing dishes, making my bed, hiding the dirty laundry, and emptying bathroom waste baskets. We were in our pajamas still from the morning, and I’d been counting down the minutes until I could put them to bed and hit the sack myself when all of this just happened. In short, I was completely caught off guard by what seemed like a really unorthodox way of doing business when selling a house.
I get the sense of urgency in wanting to get this place sold. Boy, do I ever! But this fiasco actually dizzied me, and left me bewildered. Who does this?!!??!!?? And to be honest- it quite irritated me. It’s enough that I feel my home isn’t my own already, with all of the running off so that strangers can go through my personal belongings and underwear drawer any ole time they desire. (We’ve noticed things like rummaging around in our CLOSED UP television armoire in the living room, and our bed comforter being messed up as though people actually got on top of our bed!) If that’s not bad enough, I can’t even get a heads up now? I mean, it’s not a vacant property…. A family friggin’ lives here! Our family! I can’t wallow in the misery of my menstrual cycle, laid up on the couch while wearing no bra and put off dishes for the night in my own home without folks barging in on me? Seriously now, am I overreacting? Because in hindsight, I almost can’t even believe what just happened here.
So I schlepped my hurtin’ behind around the house cleaning, with the help of my realtor and the boys. Rushing, and sweating, and cursing this wretched period of mine every step of the way. Then off my agent runs to a Girl Scout obligation for her sweet little daughter, and the boys and I open our door a good ten minutes later for a young Spanish couple. They arrived alone, with no agent. They spoke very low, and in all Spanish from what I did catch, and the male looked so disinterested that he appeared to be text messaging on his cellular device the whole time. In two minutes flat, they said a bland, “thanks”, and off they went. Sure glad I didn’t shuffle mine and the boys’ butts into the Jeep, and around the corner in the dark cold for that one!
…………………………. ??? Are any of you thinking what I’m thinkin’? What the hell was all that!!?? And if I’m wrong, somebody for friggs sakes please enlighten me.
In closing: I’m not a bitter, “Boo Hoo, I feel so sorry for me. Life is abysmal. The government sucks, my life sucks. Kill me now.”, type of person. I hate to complain right now, too. I truly do. Being an optimistic Positive Polly sure makes getting through sucky stuff like this a whole lot easier. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that not many other people short selling their home have put the effort, time and money into trying to get it sold that my hubs and I have. (Just to name a few things: we patched, sanded and painted a ceiling, painted doors and woodwork, purchased items to “stage” then actually spent a good chunk of time putting all of those items up, de-cluttered, rearranged rooms several times over, hung curtains, added a light fixture, landscaped some of the back yard, packed up a good amount of boxes, borrowed trucks and time from our family and friends to move things around, omitted several pieces of furniture that we’d prior used on a daily basis, cleaned out the garage, made about a dozen trips to Good Will donating items and we leave on our electric base board heating in the den much of the time for the potential buyers- which it just so turns out has quite dramatically increased our electric bill… And all for the sake of making the home appear cleaner and more spacious and more appealing in general.) We’ve gone balls to the wall. As have the realtors working for us. And we honestly appreciate their efforts very, very much. But I can’t help but wonder where does one selling their home draw the line?
With the huge sense of urgency in getting this house tidied up, and shown to that couple this evening, it’s quite strange that I haven’t heard a word back from anyone. I contacted my realtor twice, but she never responded. The people who came to look at the house didn’t strike me as serious buyers, or even as being all that into my house at all. But, hey, what do I know? Maybe the inconsiderate people who demand to see your home at the drop of a hat could be “the ones”, and make it all worth it in the end.
But I can’t help but wonder, is this normal protocol when selling a home?
All I know is this home selling hasn’t just inconvenienced me and my family, it’s flipped our world pretty much upside down. Even the boys have been acting out in a very noticeable and negative way and none of us have been ourselves since this process began. I think it’s high time to set some very necessary boundaries in order to reestablish even the smallest bit of structure for these children and our family unit.
The uncertainty of whether the home will sell or not will still be there, but not the uncertainty of whether or not I’m going to be dropped in on while bra-less, cramping, and about to eat dinner with my kids. If somebody’s serious enough about wanting to see your home, and possibly making an offer on it: they’ll make the appointment to see it or they'll get their behinds to one of the frequent weekend open houses.
And that’s my take on it…
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