Career Break Central

One of the most stressful parts of the planning process was deciding what to do with our house and furniture. First came the decision to sell vs rent.

Reasons to Rent:

• Our house would stay our house and we would have something to come home to;
• A tenant could pay our mortgage for us while we travel;
• Real estate prices might go up while we’re away;
• We would still have the option to stay in Belleville;

Reasons to Sell:

• We would be free and completely liberated from our worldly possessions;
• We could use the proceeds from the sale of the house to fund the trip (instead of drawing on our savings);
• A tenant might trash our house and lower its value;
• One less thing to worry about while we travel;
• The real estate bubble could burst while we’re away.

Part of the reason we decided to do this trip in the first place was our realization that we were not meant to live in Belleville for the rest of our lives. While it’s a lovely, family-oriented small town, it doesn’t offer the recreation and adventure we crave. Also, by leaving our places of employment, we had no real job prospects to return to.

It was still a difficult decision, however, since we absolutely love our home.  A year after we moved in we decided that, rather than buy a cottage which we could only use on weekends, we would invest in a beautiful backyard complete with inground pool, hot tub and outdoor kitchen. This became our sanctuary where we could retreat to relax and forget the stresses of our busy lives. It was difficult to decide to leave this permanently, but the prospect of renting was even more stressful. We had visions of getting emails in India that pipes had burst or our tenants had bolted. Besides, if we had no intention of returning to Belleville, why not sell now?

Once that decision was made, we had to prepare our house to put it on the market.  This is the third house we’ve sold in the last seven years, so we were feeling pretty confident that we were seasoned pros in the real estate game.  I anticipated months of cleaning, repairing, painting and endless showings. For those of you who are familiar with me, you know my propensity for clutter and my utter inability to get and stay organized.  Keeping our house picture perfect at all times was going to be a definite challenge. 

Allow me to digress for a moment… why is it that we wait until it’s time to sell our home to fix all the aggravating problems and finally finish all the little home improvement projects.  When selling a house, every morning when we leave, the beds are made, the laundry folded and put away and the floors are spotless.  Does everyone do this?  Every time we’re in the process of selling a house, we swear to ourselves that we will maintain these Good Housekeeping standards, yet, the minute the papers are signed, all of our lofty intentions go out the window (sparkling, clean window).

Thankfully, we only had to spend a week getting ready before we listed our house.  The night before our first showing, I confessed to Claude that I felt a little sad about leaving our beautiful home.  He agreed and reminded me that, once this was done, there was no turning back (gulp!).  We had our first conditional offer within four days (and 6 showings) and it was very close to our asking price.  We had to go back and forth several times over the closing date, but, since we have nowhere to go before we leave on our trip, we held firm and eventually agreed on August 14th as our homeless date … er I mean closing date.  We were ecstatic!  Unfortunately for us, our agent told us we should continue with showings until the offer firmed up (not having fun anymore!).  However, our buyers put their home on the market and had an unconditional offer within one day!  Yaay!  Now all that remained was the inspection. 

Funny story – the day before the inspector came, we had one last showing.  I was a little irritated that it had to be on my only day off and I had to make myself scarce.  I decided to go for a run until the intruders were gone.  I came back after half an hour and there were still cars in the driveway.  I walked to the end of the street and back and now they (the people, not the cars) were out in the back yard.  I was now dying of thirst and anxious to jump in the shower.  Finally, I swallowed my pride and went over to say hello.  The agent and the buyers, a lovely lady and her two daughters, were very nice and assured me they were finished inside and I could go back in the house.  The nice lady gushed about our beautiful backyard and lovely neighbourhood.  She asked if the playfort  was included and all I could think to say was, “Well, we can’t take it with us.” (Brilliant!)  I answered a few more questions about the house, grabbed my bottle of water and ran inside to grab a shower.  Imagine my surprise when I got out of the shower and could still hear voices on the deck.  I peeked out the bathroom window and saw my new friends hanging out by the pool.  Apparently they really liked the place and were having a hard time leaving.  The next thing I knew, I heard a noise downstairs as the little girl cried, “Daddy!”  Now this was just a little awkward.  Here I was, naked and dripping wet in my own bathroom with a strange man in my kitchen (trust me, this has never happened before).  I got dressed at warp speed, grabbed my gym bag and hightailed it to my neighbour’s house (squeegeeing the shower behind me).  By now, the family was walking around the house, checking out the landscaping.  As I was making my getaway, the nice lady called out to me, “I loved the house so much I just had to call my husband to see it.  I hope you don’t mind.”

Mind?  Why would I mind?

“Take your time,” I called out, “I’ll just hang out at the neighbours’.”

Thank God I know where they hide the spare key (since they were at work).  I stepped inside, closed the door and collapsed in giggles at the situation I’d gotten myself into.  Their dog, Kismet, came running and barking and was so happy to see me she promptly pee’d on the floor (sorry, Karen).  Twenty minutes later, I was finally able to return home for good.  Word of advice to potential home sellers – don’t try to guess how long a showing will take – when in doubt, go see a movie.

The good news was that the family liked our house enough to make an unconditional offer.  This ensured that the original buyers couldn’t afford to be too fussy on the inspection and the final papers were signed the following day.

The best part is that the new owners are actually friends of my neighbours (the wife works with Karen).  They have kids the same age and will fit into our neighbourhood wonderfully.  If you remember from an earlier post, our neighbours were devastated when we told them our travel plans.  Somehow, knowing they’ll be happy with their new neighbours takes away a little of the sting (but they’d better not be happier than they were with us). 

Phew, now that the real estate hurdle has been crossed, we can move on to more exciting things – like quitting our jobs and getting needles!

Tags: Moving, Planning, Travel

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 28th, 2006 at 8:26 pm and is filed under Planning, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.