Downsizing: Listing home for sale potential customers to frenzy of showings

Freelance writer Carola Vyhnak is leaving her 4-acre place home, north of Cobourg, Ont., for a smaller place in a nearby town. She’s preserving a diary about her downsizing journey. In the second instalment, she describes the feeding frenzy of showings top up to the sale of her assets:

One particular day. That’s all it took to provide my very little piece of pastoral paradise.

But you could have knocked me around with a hen feather when the flood of requests for showings begun filling my inbox and concept app, when the listing came out.

Who knew modest-city Ontario would be susceptible to the similar serious estate feeding-frenzy as the large metropolis? (My expert Re/Max broker Jacqueline Pennington wasn’t amazed, presented the deficiency of attributes at my price point in Northumberland County.)

The very first real estate agent to get there at my house on a hill confides that it is her clients’ “dream property,” even ahead of they’ve seen it. They’ve been waiting around a year with income in the financial institution, she claims.

By the time the dust settles on the dust highway foremost to my door, 22 possible customers, tire-kickers and anxious initial-timers have peered into closets, turned on taps and been wowed by the views of character. But it turns out the secluded place isn’t the dreamers’ cup of camomile after all, and it’s a younger relatives of four who choose to give it a go.

They seem like a very good in shape for the 4 acres of perennial and pollinator gardens, trees, shrubs and grass that have come to be much too a great deal operate for another person who’s closer to old stewing hen than spring rooster.

The sale may perhaps be brief, but it does not appear effortless. It’s preceded by three extensive days’ value of frazzled nerves, specialist cleaning, primping, staging and photography … all major up to The Big Expose.

In the scramble to disguise all signs of existence just before each individual showing, I go by way of a checklist: cat litter box driving a shut closet door toss pillows on the beds kitchen area counter de-crumbed puppy and pet bed taken off.

Substantially much less taxing is my piggy bank’s contribution to preserving those obtaining eyes on the prize: $200 for laneway gravel, $60 for mulch and pansies in winter season-weary gardens, and $15.81 for a sale-priced alternative gentle fixture in the downstairs corridor.

Then there’s the untallied costs of Wendy’s salads, Tim’s wraps, and a smoked salmon crepe from a new café in town, all subbing for selfmade meals built impossible by strangers in the kitchen.

Despite the fact that the conditional acquire offer from the spouse and children of four lands the day right after the listing will come out, other hopefuls continue to keep coming to see the area.

Many nail-biting days afterwards, the financing situation is cleared and the offer is completed, two minutes just before the supply expires. My beloved sanctuary, with cows as neighbours, sells for 99 for every cent of the inquiring price tag.

It feels superior, like the greatest compliment, when someone would like to get your home. Or probably it’s just simply because there’s so tiny else out there.

As homeowners, the buyers will also turn into custodians of dozens of hand-transplanted cedars and saplings, home made birdhouses rapidly tenanted for the duration of the continuing avian housing crisis (a.k.a. habitat reduction), and an prolonged squirrel relatives who tap on the glass doorway for peanuts.

Just after the purchase agreement is signed, I wake up struck by the idea that my very good fortune as a seller could quickly reverse itself at the obtaining conclude. In one particular nightmare, I be a part of the household-hungry hordes trampling each other in stress mode. It’s a scene rooted in actuality: my target is a mid-priced bungalow. They are significantly in demand from customers, in accordance to community realtors.

Subsequent: The hunt

SHARE: