Buying and Selling a House: Ten Days Without a Net

Some people drink or smoke too much; some people like to drive fast or go in for extreme sports. When my wife and I need a thrill we put our house on the market.

For some reason we both have a history of moving around a lot, both before and after we were married.

When we were first married in 1999, we lived in a rented duplex for 10 months, then bought a home in Aylmer, Quebec, a suburb of Ottawa where housing is less expensive. We were there for three years and three months, then moved downtown to be closer to my work, since I was in TV news and working crazy hours.

We lived in an urban co-op for almost two years, then bought a house in a suburb in the far west end of Ottawa. It took us about 18 months to decide we disliked the community (or lack of same) and found a beautiful place on the top of a steep hill out in the woods. Although beautiful, there were things we never really thought about previously - like irrational fears about our well and septic system, the costs of hiring a plowing service for the winter months, the commute and, finally, the hill itself, which forced us to buy a four-wheel-drive and still left us stranded when we had a heavy snow or freezing rain. The hill was also a disincentive for people to come and visit in the winter months. In Ottawa, that’s about four or five months out of the year.

We were there for almost exactly a year, then came to an urban area not far from downtown. We have been in this place for nearly four years, which is a record for us.

But circumstances change and with my son’s music getting very serious, we decided it was time to re-evaluate our finances. This led to the decision to reduce the size of our mortgage by moving to a less expensive part of town.

We didn’t want to go back to another plain old suburb. Luckily, we found a place that’s not too old, not too expensive and not too far from the urban core. So we called a real estate agent, put in an offer, and got ready to list our house.

These days, selling a house involves something called staging, which seems to mean making your house look like a work of art. Now people don’t normally live in works of art, they just look at them. There are certainly no dish racks or wet toothbrushes in most works of art, so we had to excise these things from view. The same went for any evidence that we might read books, have hobbies, produce garbage or take family pictures.

Since we live in a neighbourhood that is becoming more desirable, our house saw a lot of traffic - well over a dozen people in less than 36 hours. On the second day of showings we received an offer that was to our liking and five days later, after the home inspection, we’ve sold our house.

Having a good agent makes all the difference in the world, and we hired a couple of the best: Patrick Morris and Rob Kearns from the Morris Home Team.

Buying your first home is nothing like having to buy and sell at the same time. You have to make a choice: buy a place and hope that your old house sells fast, or sell your place and hope you find a new place fast. Both are incredibly stressful, especially if your bank is not willing to let you hold two mortgages at once. Fortunately, mine is, so at least I wasn’t going to be sued for breach of contract. But the selling doesn’t always go as smoothly as all that. In fact, a couple of times in the past we wondered if our house would ever be sold at all. There was a time during this sale when we thought the purchase agreement might fall apart too and we would have to start showing it all over again.

To the passing observer it would appear that our family changes houses on impulse, with very little forethought. But every move we’ve made has been for a very good reason - occasionally for many good reasons.

Sometimes in communications it’s a hard thing to shake things up and try to change the established order. You shouldn’t do it just for sake of change - there has to be a reason, maybe more than one. This is why you should always be examining the way you do things and looking for opportunities to improve. Maybe most of what you’re doing is good, even excellent, and there’s no need to change anything. Maybe it’s going well but you can see potential issues down the road. If so, take steps now to prepare for them. Then again, maybe your shop really does need a major shake-up. If this is the case, it’s only a matter of time before someone with the power to hire and fire takes notice. Then it’s better to be on record as the shaker or else you could end up as the shakee.

And that could leave you living without a net for a lot longer than the time it takes to sell a house.