Anyone ever sold a house before?

[Pidgey]

We have a realtor coming to see our house in 3 hours and will be listing it soon.

I need a different career and there isn't much to offer in this town besides what I'm already doing...

So we are leaving for a state with seasons and warmer summers.

But we've dumped 5 years of our lives into fixing this house up its bitter sweet

I wake up some mornings super excited for our next chapter. But some morning I just don't want to get out of bed. Almost in a depressed state.
So many great memories.

Anyone else ever sold their first home.



How was your experience? Any tips to handling it besides just ripping the bandaid off?

I'll probably update this post with some photos of our house.

Just had a minute to get some of my thoughts out. It's a rough day today.
Doesn't help I popped a blood vessel in my eye.



EDIT:

Our home photos

Please log in to view spoilers.

[Alcremie]

10 years ago, lost it, had no choice but to leave or stare down a Sheriff. Mom had 8 gardens throughout the front and back yards. House was spacious and didn't have to deal with sharing walls with neighbors. Life was good then. I will always miss that house for sure.
Funnily enough, my mom was a realtor for 30 years. But the '08 recession struck our small town (rust belt) so bad she wasn't the only realtor that had problems.

Take pictures. Put the pictures of your home through the years lived in, remodels, etc. in a special place and look back at them.

Have you applied for any home loans yet?

[Mefu]

I have moved many times throughout my life, and have sold several houses in the last decade.

Some tips:

1. Be realistic with your asking price, check on the value of houses in your neighbourhood similar to yours sold recently
2. Do not expect to recoup the money you spent fixing the house - Unless you bought the house for a discount and are looking to flip, most of the time any renovations made would not exceed market price by perhaps a few %
3. You may think it's your dream home and thus have invested into it, but that doesn't mean the buyer does. Many times when people buy a house they will do their own renovations, keep that in mind when you are receiving an offer that the buyer may not be interested in what you did for the house.
4. Know your timelines, how long are you willing to wait? If your asking price is too high your house can be in the market for 30 or more days, at which point interest in your house will go significantly down, if you're looking to move soon, you'll likely have to post at a lower price
5. You sold your house, great! Usually a real estate lawyer will handle this, but a lot of times people who place an offer are doing so with a mortgage, some of whom have not been officially approved yet. Expect that you may find the closing date later than agreed after accepting an offer, (you would usually be monetarily compensated for this though)

[Pidgey]

10 years ago, lost it, had no choice but to leave or stare down a Sheriff. Mom had 8 gardens throughout the front and back yards. House was spacious and didn't have to deal with sharing walls with neighbors. Life was good then. I will always miss that house for sure.
Funnily enough, my mom was a realtor for 30 years. But the '08 recession struck our small town (rust belt) so bad she wasn't the only realtor that had problems.

Take pictures. Put the pictures of your home through the years lived in, remodels, etc. in a special place and look back at them.

Have you applied for any home loans yet?

We have not applied for a loan yet. All the money we make on this house will be the down payment on the next house.
We should only need a loan for 30-70k. So we aren't stressing. We both have 700-800 credit scores.



@(you need an account to see links)

1. We are pricing based on the area. The realtor thinks we should ask for more. But pricing is always tricky.

2. The housing market has doubled here so even if we did nothing to our house we are still making everything back.

3. I understand that completely. We put on a new roof and did lots of updates inside that most people would like
But I'm sure other people will have other opinions x).

4. We aren't in a huge rush. But we are worried with all our animals how timing will work with buying the 2nd house and closing around the same time frame.
And with this ^ it's a 29 hour drive to the place we are looking to buy in...

5. With our animals if the date moves back it would just help us out.


Lots of stuff to think about. Some of the stuff we've already prepared for. Appreciate all the feedback so far!!


Thank you both 💕

[I_royalty_I]

Haven’t sold a house before but I’ve had those same thoughts when my parents talked about selling my childhood home and downsizing a bit to be on the water instead.

House prices are crazy right now so I think you could push to the higher end of what you’re after. Many houses around here will list for $x and sell for like $20k or more over. It’s kind of insane.

Look at it from the positive side - you’re going to be moving on to new adventures with work, a new location, and new opportunities to build up a new house into exactly what you want

[birdies]

Never a house but I've let go of things I had emotional attachments to. I think the photos plan is a good idea - take lots, you'll probably never look at them but knowing they're there will make a difference. These things are really hard until they're done, and once you've got through the big emotional heft of it it feels much better than you expect. You'll also have lots of new things to focus on to move forward with.

[♥ pppp3 ♥]

following this thread and joining in because i'm in a similar position.. at 16 i lost my mum and being an only child she left everything to me when she passed (single mum), which wasn't much BUT she owned our house. i wasn't old enough to live there alone as i was still a child, and she had it in the will that i wasn't to receive any control over anything until i turned 25, my uncle took over and did his best for me over the next 7 years. fast forward to last year and i'm 27 and ready to take control, move home and figure things out. the house had been rented out by a single old woman for 10ish years, never raised the rent, left her alone for the most part which she appreciated, but unfortunately it means a lot of things were left in a not so great condition. not really anyones fault as even though we had said we'd keep her rent cheap if she just let us know what was going on with the house and if things needed repairing, she probably had fears that we'd kick her out if anything serious needed fixing (i understand that fear as i've been a renter my whole life and many MANY landlords are assholes) so when i moved in i realised there was A LOT of stuff that was busted. it also wasnt entirely her fault as my uncle had bigger fish to fry and left most of the responsibility in the real estate agents hands.. blah blah blah long story short i moved in and there was water damage, termite damage, failed waterproofing in the bathroom, a tangled mass of weeds over the whole block, broken doors, fixtures etc AND all of the stumps need re-stumping.
i fixed what i could on my own and with the help of my partner, and dumped my entire inheritance into fixing the water damage. it's been nothing but stress the past year and i'm ready to leave. i love the memories this place holds but i can't keep funneling money i don't have into an old, deteriorating home so i've decided to sell and try buy a smaller home closer to m partners family up on a lovely mountain about 3 hrs south from here. the real estate lady is coming over today to value the house and give me some tips on what i can do to make it saleable. i already know it needs painting badly, but because it's on a slop and quite high i'd need scaffolding which is expensive.. we're planning on doing the lawns, painting, smaller repairs ourselves.. but i want to see what i could get for it is as it stands right now with minimal effort as i'm emotionally exhausted and BROKE.
anyways sorry for the rant but just wanna say i feel your exhaustion and frustration.. owning a house isn't as easy as people think, especially when you're young and poor and have no idea what youre doing.

[Lilac Tentacles]

Selling our house was a nightmare.

We had it appraised and inspected out of pocket ahead of time to make sure everything was squared away and would be simple.

We had buyers fall through 3 times.

The first buyer fell through because the appraiser undervalued our house. We were priced absolutely on-track for our neighborhood. Found out after the fact that the dude knew the buyers and appraised low so we'd be forced to lower our price by $20k. Buyers had loan pre-approval. We filed a complaint and the buyers backed out on their own. I even offered to pay for a second appraisal out of pocket.

The second buyer wasted 3 weeks of our time and never sent the due diligence so we weren't even compensated for the wasted time.

The final buyer wasn't even in the country so we didn't close on time, we had to wait 3 months past our closing time and we were already in Japan. We had to pay someone to keep the lawn mowed and keep the utilities on just in case the sale fell through... again.


I loved our house. My daughter was born while we lived there, it was our first home, we had a swamp in the backyard, quiet neighborhood, great spot, and i adored the home we made as a family. I was very sad when we left.
If we had stayed in America, I probably would have kept the house and rented, but dealing with renters internationally wouldn't have been feasible. It was a military town and it's a crapshoot whether you're going to get a nice, clean family, or a single Marine who hosts all-night ragers and punches holes in the walls.

We will probably buy again when we move back in a few years, but we're holding onto how shitty the sale was just as a reminder to steel up our resolve and buy booze to survive the ordeal.

[Nattiee]

Selling can be very tedious, especially if you're open to private showings. Having to keep your house pristine (especially if you have pets) can get annoying. Even more so depending on which season your listing goes up. Knowing your market will help you determine the type of Realtor you can "get away" with. In slower markets, you may want someone more reputable who will actually work for you and get the house sold. In hot markets, it honestly doesn't matter who sells your house because the houses will often sell themselves. At least this has been my experience.

I also recommend locking up your valuable or moving them outside of your home all together until the process is complete. You never know what people are seeing/touching when you're not there.


Oh, and read the offer well. Make sure it's clear whether you're buying or selling. Do they want fixtures? Which ones? Do they want furniture included? "Whatever shows in the pictures" isn't enough. Have them provide an itemized list or you may be left with a headache when they try to say they feel cheated.

[Pidgey]

I need to read through all these posts shortly but I'm going to post my home photos here.

I'll add them to my main post after.

I love our house the most during Christmas so I'll be pulling a couple older photos.


I'll read through all your replies and reply as well shortly!