It took nearly six months, two sets of realtors, hundreds of emails, and thousands of dollars but at last we are no longer property owners in Virginia. Some people are aware of the comedy of errors/fiasco/disaster that our journey has been but I share more generally as a form of therapy.

Back in February, we received a typical marketing letter from a local realtor stating that they had clients who were interested in a house in our neighborhood and if we had ever considered selling then they would love to hear from us. We knew then that there was a small chance of relocation but even if that wasn’t an issue, we had already decided that as empty nesters we certainly didn’t need 5 bedrooms and 3.5 baths. So we investigated. We met with the sender of the letter^* who asserted that he had two potential buyers lined up for our neighborhood and then shared all kinds of statistics on how successful his brokerage is. We let him know that we had no firm date for moving as our destination was still in question. We had him come by and view the house which he declared to be like a “show house” and would be able to command top dollar. We were worried that our lack of neutral palette would be a problem but since we had brought in a color consultant and had things professionally designed, it was declared a strength not a weakness. Given that we had bought the house at nearly the height of the market (June 2006), we had grave concerns about how much we would lose by selling when the housing market hadn’t quite fully recovered. (The downside to being an economist is that you tend to pay attention to such things which can sometimes be depressing.) We met again to discuss details and he suggested a marketing strategy that he thought would work to basically sell the house for what we paid for it 8 years prior. It was a good sales pitch; we bought it and signed on the dotted line. The fact that it took 3 rounds of back and forth to get the listing agreement right should have been a clue where things would head. We wanted several changes that took a great deal of effort to get put into the contract correctly. Primary was that we didn’t want to have the listing agreement go beyond the end of June. That would give them just over 90 days to sell our house. Their original date in the contract was August 2015! Who signs a listing agreement for more than a year!!!

Off course, by the time we got things settled the potential buyers had moved on. The actual realtor that we worked with, “Olga”, came by with a photographer and we put the house into the MLS in mid March and scheduled the first open house for March 16…. when it proceeded to snow for pretty much two days, dumping about 10 inches in the area. Okay, so much for the open house. Needless to say, no one showed up. So we tried again the next weekend. We had a pretty good turn out but no bites. And that was the story for the next 3 months. We had a total of 8 open houses, lowered the price by more than 10%, had to scamper out for showings several times per week but not a single offer. Not even a low ball offer.

And why? No idea. We got little feedback from our realtor – she only contacted us if she was forwarding an email from the broker, responding directly to a question from us, or proposing yet another open house. What we did hear didn’t jive with the “show house” idea that we had been given. The bathrooms needed updating or they didn’t like the stucco on the family room ceiling or there was no master bedroom on the main floor or, my personal favorite, there were too many trees! At one point, the issue of paint colors was finally raised. We got rid of the dill pickle green bathroom, the chili pepper red sitting room and the blue kitchen – it was too cold – and waited to see if it would help. Nope. Nothing.

We started to get close to the end of our listing agreement and we let Olga and the broker know that we were not going to renew. That got some attention and a flurry of activity: offers for cuts to commissions, other possible services, etc. The email that got me was one from the broker, forwarded by Olga of course, that said he felt they deserved an extension for a variety of reasons one of which was that they had gone along with our pricing strategy in the beginning. WHAT? WHOSE pricing strategy? That was the last straw.

We interviewed other realtors including one that worked for a large national brokerage and was recommended by our mortgage company. He was very nice and very confused: he did all the math and all the research and his recommendation was to paint things neutral and raise the price because that’s what the market said it would sell for. Except that we didn’t really believe that a coat of paint would make $25K worth of difference. We had already made our plans for our new destination: house selected and moving dates set. We did not want to take another several months to get this sorted because we were due to leave in several weeks. So we signed with a local realtor, fellow church member who was associated with a smaller brokerage but who came HIGHLY recommended by a good friend. They gave concrete suggestions of fixes to make that our first realtor hadn’t suggested – and were quite easy to do given the effect they had. We agreed on a yet lower listing price too: we needed to move this thing. The new contract was signed on July 1 and the open house set for the following weekend. There were more than 2 dozen people who came through on the first open house – which was probably more than all the first eight combined. Two days later, we had an offer. It was a lowball offer but we decided to try to meet them halfway and chose a price that would let us walk away with exactly what we had put as a down payment. This assuaged my desperate fear of losing my shirt. They declined our counter with the remark we should “let them know when we were willing to meet their price”! Okay, we weren’t that desperate. Lots more showings over the next two weeks and a new overture from the first offerors that said they were willing to go an extra $5K. Nope still not desperate enough. At one point it looked like we may have two competing offers but in the end we got another low offer but this time they accepted our counter to meet my minimum price. As the moving truck pulled out of the driveway of 9700 Stipp Street, we were electronically signing documents and had a contract on the house.

Not that it was the end of it. We’ve had several weeks of back and forth where the buyers were a bit challenging to work with. One clause in the inspection report said “Test all light fixtures in the house, make necessary repairs and install new lightbulbs.” WTF? Why not just say “allow electrician to go through the house, find anything that might possibly be a problem at any time and pay to fix it. And buy all new lightbulbs.” We declined to make that repair and they were okay with that. Closing was set for today, August 29th, and we worked long distance to try to get done the repairs that we did agree to. It seemed that we were finally in the homestretch until we got to the walkthrough.

And they realized that there was one thing that we had overlooked and hadn’t had done. So this morning was another flurry of emails, texts, electronic signatures, and faxes. We had signed all our paperwork yesterday so we had only to sign and initial things that they were sending us. Then the lender didn’t like our arrangement. Oh, and the fertilizer, laundry detergent, and paint that we left behind thinking it was the nice thing to do just had to go. So now we have to pay someone to take it away.

But the word is that all is done. I still have bills to pay and probably owe my realtor her commission again in repayment for services that she arranged because we couldn’t. But we are now down to one house and one mortgage.

That’s the last of the catching up – now we’re moving on.

^* I won’t mention any names here. Suffice to say that anyone who shops at a Giant in the Burke area has seen the husband and wife duo on the shopping carts. Return to text