Our 2016 (Part 3)

The story continues from last time...

So we got rid of our real estate agent mid June that we should’ve gotten rid of early on in 2016. But what was done was done and we were just going to have to chalk it up to experience and move on.

Where to go from here?

Well, in June, the most amazing man in the world approached me with the idea of selling the house ourselves. I was reluctant. After all, this was a little overwhelming. But he was convinced we can do this. His argument was that no one knew our house, our neighbourhood, our location better than we do. And wasn’t society heading toward self reliance, anyway? Didn’t we pump our own gas, do our own banking, book our vacations without the help of a travel agent, sell our cars and furniture by ourselves, run businesses out of our homes or online, and basically handle most of our affairs autonomously?

But...this is a house...

“So what. It’s just another product. But with a bigger price tag attached to it.”

But...the paperwork...

“Standard forms that we’ll fill in and send off to our lawyer to check.”

I was hesitant. A little nervous. But also intrigued. Still. I needed a little more time. I said I would take a few days to think about it and do some research on the topic. But...in the meantime...perhaps...wouldn’t it be a good idea...maybe...we could select three real estate agents, from three different brokerage firms and interview them. Just...to see.

“Fair enough.”

Trying to narrow the selection down to three agents is quite a feat. For a city of about 150,000 residents, there are over 400, maybe more, licensed agents here. Why are there so many? Who the heck knows. All I know is that it was a headache sorting through them and trying to choose wisely. We sent out emails and made some phone calls. And that list of three was altered over and over again as we crossed paths with pompous, overly busy and condescending agents. The entire process was...taxing.

Finally, we made an appointment with a woman to come by the house one Friday in June to take a look around, evaluate our place, discuss our options and, basically, sell her services to us. Convince us that she was the best person for the job. Instead of doing that, she got on our nerves.

The first annoyance was when she showed up without the CMA report (comparative market analysis) of similar active or recently sold properties in our area that we had requested she prepare for us and bring along. And that she’d agreed to. When we questioned her about it, she shrugged and said she’d return on Monday with it.

The second one was all the hemming and hawing and blah blah blabbity blah from her. But despite all the chatter, she wouldn’t get to the point or answer our questions. A sign of how frustrating it would be working with her.

The third was that she didn’t return on Monday with the CMA report nor did she call or email us – as a courtesy – to let us know. She just ignored the whole thing. And us. So Monday came and went. But so did Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday. Then on Friday night, an entire week later, we returned home to find a message on our answering machine that had been left at 8 PM by this arrogant agent that simply said “Hi. This is [agent x]. Call me at xxx-xxx-xxxx”

Extremely taxing...

I turned to the most amazing man in the world and said “Count me in. Let’s do this ourselves.”

This was music to his ears and he grinned from ear to ear. Because like me, he was fed up to the eyeballs with these #$@&%*!? real estate agents.

And during the next few days...

I got out my tripod and my DSLR and snapped photos of our house inside and out. The most amazing man in the world signed us up on one of those 'sold by the owner' online real estate brokers and did all the written marketing. And on the third week of June in 2016, the sale of our home, which was going to be handled 100% by us, went live.

To be continued...