I’ve been keeping it quiet since it began snowballing, but me being me, I didn’t want to jinx anything and wanted to wait until it was basically a forgone conclusion before I did any sort of writing or talking about it in any sort of fashion. It has been no secret that Jen and I worked our asses off a little while back in preparation for putting our house up on the market, and that less than two weeks ago, our house officially went up on the market.
However, just like that, the process has ended as frantically and as quickly as it started. In the span of barely 13 days, my listed home was given numerous offers, one was selected, the buyer initiated inspections and the closing process, and today, I’m on the cusp of turning over the keys and signing over the title to the house to its new owners.
After 13 years, I will no longer be a homeowner.
Honestly, I didn’t expect this to happen this quickly. I don’t think any of us between myself, Jen and our realtor really did. I expected, and dreaded the notion that my house would sit on the market for an uncomfortably long time, and that we’d have to slash the price once or twice to entice buyers into biting, because that’s often been the case with other homes in my subdivision, which has the dubious misfortune of being located in a part of the Metro Atlanta area where the recession hit the hardest and the housing market recovered the absolute least. I thought I’d get to the point where the melancholy sadness of leaving my house would eventually fade away, and I’d eventually grow exasperated and resentful of paying for, maintaining, and concerning over a property where nobody lived in, a far location away from the rest of life, and that when the day came when it finally sold, it would be like a monumental weight off of my shoulders.
That was hardly the case, as fast as we listed the home, it drew interest immediately, and the snowball began rolling down the hill faster than the emotions of separation anxiety could really take hold. The house was priced tremendously aggressively with the intent of selling as fast as possible, as it’s not really any secret that the longer a property remains on the market, the further its appeal drops with each passing day with eventually its price in an attempt to drum it back up. And it worked immediately, drawing enough serious offers to where a contract was accepted in days, leading to a fairly immediate closing process which saw inspections and walk-throughs come and go in what felt like the blink of an eye.
Frankly, it has all worked out for the best, because ultimately, all parties involved are getting what they really want out of this whole process. Jen and I are not going to be paying numerous months on a vacant house while we’re both adapting to separate lives in apartments. And our realtor is not going to have to worry about a property in an unappealing part of the city, sitting with no interest, wondering what tactics and/or price cuts would be necessary in order to move it off the agenda. Everyone is going to be making a little bit of coin in a scenario where breaking even was ultimately the goal, and in a very short amount of time, we all get to move forward with our lives, with the house no longer being part of the equation.
All that’s really left is the emotion and melancholy stuff and the official goodbye to the house that housed me for the last 13 years. In this regard, things worked out for the best as well, since it happened all so quickly, that there simply wasn’t any time for any resentment, relief or exasperation to take effect. Jen and I paid very little more than just every single month we resided in the home, and there doesn’t appear to have been a tremendous amount of sunk cost in paying bills for an empty home. There was no time for the empty house to begin feeling like a burden, and now that we’re saying goodbye so quickly, it’s actually legitimately sad and emotional that the ride is coming to an end.
And that’s really it. After months of hard work, adaptation and acceptance of change, after weeks of emo-ey and sad posts about eventually saying goodbye to my house, and after a few more weeks of nervous excitement of the home selling process, we’ve reached the end of the line. I’ve shed enough tears, given more than enough thoughts and written plenty of words about the matter, but change is change, and when it comes to life there’s only one direction to move, which is forward, whether it was wanted or not.
Goodbye, house. We’ve been through a lot of good times, and we’ve been through some bad times. But the good ones far outweighed the bad ones, fortunately. Things didn’t work out as well as we’d hoped as far as the surrounding area was concerned, but we always made things work in general. Everybody complained and made fun of our distance from the rest of Atlanta, but I think it made Jen and I stronger people, more resilient to commuting, and less apt to take for granted shorter distances. We’ve learned tons about homeownership, and through our shared experiences, it makes us wiser and stronger for our next attempts at future American dreams of owning property.
Although I will not be the legal owner of the property and will not be living in you any further, you’ll always be known as home to me. I hope you give future residents much of the same wealth of experience and the invaluable pleasure of a roof over their heads as you have for Jen and I over the last 13 years.
And as much as I look forward to not making the sometimes long drive down to you anymore on a permanent basis, I will, undoubtedly, miss you.
