It has been a very long and challenging several weeks. We did receive an offer on our house at the end of the day on Valentine’s. A few weeks into the process, something hit the buyers wrong, and although it looked like they were ready to release the contingencies and move forward, they chose to cancel the contract instead. They were well within their legal rights to do so. I mean, if you aren’t sure about a house, you should definitely not buy it. That would be a poor personal and business move. Right?
We were pretty upset for awhile. It seemed as though the items they were focused on were strange. We can’t do much about some things as we didn’t build or remodel the house. I can tell you that if someone had asked me if I wanted a step down into the living room from the foyer, or the carpet color upstairs, or the wall color in most rooms, I would have said absolutely no. There isn’t really anything else I don’t mostly love about this house, so it is kind of baffling to me that anyone wouldn’t walk in and want to buy it right away. So it initially felt really, really personal when they chose cancel the contract and move on.
Then we took a step back emotionally and realized that we have often made the decision to see a house in person without ever considering the seller, their needs, or their feelings. We have been inside of dozens of houses in the last 10 months, not to mention the hundreds we have checked out online. (You can often tour a house virtually, and it is very fun.) Although I have never actually used a dating app (when we started dating 35+ years ago, they didn’t exist), I do know folks who have and do use them. I get the impression that looking at houses on Zillow or Realter.com or Trulia or Refin is a lot like using a dating app: Look at the pics, read the description, check out the details, then either save/love/favorite it, or move on. There isn’t an option to swipe left, but at least in Zillow, you can hide a house you don’t want to see in your feed.
We have asked to see disclosures and inspection reports, read them through, then moved on. There was one house we liked enough to consider making an offer, and another down the street that was in even better shape. Our agent even told one seller’s agent that we would be making an offer. That agent asked us to wait a few days as they hadn’t even had an open house yet. In those few days, we realized that it wasn’t really the house for us, so we let it go and moved on. I now feel quite a bit of empathy for those sellers. They were likely sitting around waiting for their phone to ring, or their text or email to ding, but they never heard from us again.
Separating business and personal issues in the real estate market can be tricky. It is not smart to make a huge financial investment in a property you are going to live in that you don’t like. Yes, some things can, will, and maybe should, be changed once you move in, but really it is better to want to live there from the beginning. Yet some buyers are more interested in the business side of home buying. Flippers, for instance; folks who buy a house to fix up and then sell even have their own reality tv shows. Or folks who plan to live in a house long enough to do some cosmetic work, build some equity, then move on, likely don’t have as much emotional investment in a house that I need.
There was a short period of time when we owned a rental. Even when we were shopping for that investment property, I was not willing to make that large of a financial commitment for a house that I didn’t like. It was as much a personal as a business decision to me.
I want to dig in, revel in my our home, make enough changes slowly over time and create a space that is welcoming to our family and friends. This move is very personal for us, yet we to keep an eye on the business side of the entire process.
Visceral Musings 