Three Week Recap: Change Is NEVER Easy
Home Sweet Home: We figured if we gave ourselves five months we might be able to sell our house by Alex's graduation at the end of June. The happy but bittersweet news is that we were able to move it on our own in less than two weeks; the closing will follow in two months. A little bit of luck, a little bit of stardust, and Alex keeping his room clean all resulted in the desired outcome.
If you are relocating and interested in trying to sell your home on your own (also known as a FSBO), here are some tips that helped us:
- We created a detailed, seven-page flyer on our home chock-full of color photos and descriptive writeups on each room.
- With this tool in place, we did a lot of grass roots marketing: sending it by e-mail to everyone we knew who might have been remotely interested or who might have known someone who would be interested in a house like ours. We also offered an incentive to our friends and family if they brought us the ultimate buyers. Finally, we created a slightly different version of the same flyer and distributed it to local realtors and offered them a guaranteed 2% commission if they brought us a buyer (as opposed to the 5-6% we would have had to shell out if we listed the home initially with a realtor as a seller's agent).
- The flyer was also distributed in a brochure box on a professionally printed sign in front of the house. I found a great online resource in www.buildasign.com. They offered many choices, reasonable prices and quick turnaround and delivery.
- Another terrific website is www.zillow.com. Many people know you can use it to research property values and/or tax assessments. But it also has a feature where you can list information on your home for sale (almost as much as I had put in our seven-page flyer) free of charge.
- We also held two open houses and ran an advertisement in the local newspaper.
So now we will move on. We are going to take Ken's childhood home, which had gotten tired and sad, and return it to its roots as a "happy home." We are going to make it a fun and fabulous place for our college-age children to come home to. It will never be our magnificent and roomy Basking Ridge house -- the one I said I would only leave feet first -- but it will definitely be home. A jewel box of a place we will create from our memories as a family and our hopes for the future.
The Birdies Leave the Nest: You know the day will come, but they say you are never really ready for it. I am still not sure how I am going to do. When Stirling left 18 months ago, I knew I would miss her terribly but was so thrilled for what I knew would be an exciting experience that I got past my own issues to embrace the euphoria of the moment. And of course cell phones and a habit of talking at least once a day also helps.
But when Allie hits the door, then Ken and I will be the real deal: empty nesters. I think about this a lot these days. Because I have the same hopes for the promise of Alex's college experience, I know I will be thrilled for him as well. And I know that the four of us have enough of a bond that both children will come home often.
But the uncertainty of all the rest of it -- how I will fill my time, what changes I will be making in my career, how our relationships will change -- are all still to be determined.
As long as we can keep our sanity, it's all just part of the "excellent adventure."
