Selling Your Home - It's A Process

Once a decision is made to sell your home, there's a process involved. You make the decision, you start a list of task to complete, actual work begins to take place, emotions may arise and the roller coaster ride begins.

Decisions are made about where to move, what agent to use, how to price the property, etc. The decision to move may be due to a much anticipated opportunity such as job transfer, expecting a baby and needing more room or a promotion at work allowing you to purchase a dream home. Or it could be for a more unhappy event such as job loss, divorce, or death in the family. Empty nesters could qualify for happy or unhappy emotions. Either way, emotions are going to run amuck!

If you are a "list maker" you'll want to organize your thoughts, put your tasks to complete on paper and develop a time line about what's involved with the move. Whether you use pen and paper or digital sources such as computer or smart phone, this is a large part of the process. The is when "disassociation" from your home where you've built memories begins to happen. If you see it in black & white, you may start to believe that this is really going to happen. It's part of the process!

Get ready, this next stage is where the tasks start. This is the stage where everyone in the household needs to roll up their sleeves and get to work. Pre-packing, un-cluttering spaces, making repairs and cleaning like you've never cleaned before, must take place. Once all of this is complete, you then have the arduous task of maintaining this state until the house sells. Ugh! It's not easy, but if you want to sell the house, it's a necessary part of the.....process!

Emotions - this is the part of the process that will show up through-out all of the above stages. Emotions run high while deciding on a price to list, jump back on edge when you get a call to "show" the house. "Everyone pick - up! Their showing the house today! " Then you worry all day about what the buyer thought about your house. You call your Realtor only to find out that they haven't heard from the showing agent for feed- back. One of two things can happen at this point, either you will become excited due to an offer or disappointed from a low offer.

If you manage to work out a signed sales contract, you start the real packing and make moving arrangements, all the while keeping your fingers crossed about the appraisal, the buyers home inspection or that the buyers loan will go through without any complications. At the closing, a feeling of relief may be experienced or disappointment due the final sales price and proceeds to the seller.

Final part - taking that last look around the property once the last box is loaded into the moving truck to be sure you've left nothing behind and seeing the "ghosts" of past events that took place during your time spent in this home. I've done this a time or two in my life and I promise it can be a bitter/sweet moment. But...look ahead and anticipate your future

Life is an adventure! Enjoy the process!

Whew- I'm exhausted!