Selling? Now What?

I recently asked one of my clients, to write down how her and her husband are dealing with this sellers market. Here's what she said.

Like many other homeowners in Simcoe County, I have been watching the housing market rocketing upwards and considering my options.  Do we sell right now and get out of Dodge?  Do we keep watching to see where things go?  And then panicking with all the what ifs that entails.  We have recently been offered a place to stay if we do decide to move, and on one hand that is absolutely thrilling, but the other hand, the daunting prospect of packing up and moving is terrifying.  I got married in this house, brought two babies home to this house, and truthfully lived here longer than I’ve lived anywhere.

I reached out to Erin with some general questions and she sent back some very specific answers.  Step one in all this is declutter.  As small home owners with two young children, this initial task is alarming at best.  We figured we would casually start now in the hopes to list later this year, but we have been advised that if we have somewhere to go, and want to move the time is now.  So that was my initial panic.  Making big decisions is always scary.  When we bought this house we didn’t have to consider school catchment zones or anything else, but now it just seems like so much more is at stake.  Emotional turmoil when it comes to moving is real folks!  We have started listing all kinds of things on Kijiji and facebook, making donation piles, garbage piles, and random old paper piles to shred and then recycle.  Do you ever look at an item in your home and wonder how you have managed to hang on to it for so long?  We are already finding stuff we should have thrown out years ago.  If moving is on your radar for anytime soon I suggest starting to purge now!!!

The practical stuff is getting sorted out, calls to our mortgage broker, panicked texts to Erin, and casual online viewing of real estate and lending fees.  Figuring out where is open to donate stuff, and looking for storage lockers has been consuming my time, but every now and then its the nostalgic panic that creeps in.

I am dying for my kids to have their own bedrooms, for us to have a garage and a finished basement...but what is it we are leaving behind?  Awesome neighbours who share their pool all summer long, 10 years of memories in this house that we bought and fixed up together.  A house is just a house, it’s the people who fill it that make it a home...this I know, but there is something about making that move from your first home, in a pandemic that just adds another layer of anxiety to the whole thing.