I put my house on the market back in April.
“It’ll be a snap to sell it”, said the realtor. “Piece of cake.”
Those are the things a guy likes to hear. Following the relative ease I’d had selling my house in Natick in 2002, surely someone would want a nearly new colonial-style house on 2.64 acres of land in the scenic land of nouveau riche: Salem, New Hampshire.
Or not.
Between April and May 2005, my house was shown probably 30 times. I had zero offers during this period of time, and I should also note that no open house was ever held. For a house of its size, one would assume a family would be purchasing it, so my belief was that the house would need to sell by no later than August to allow the new buyers time to settle in before the start of the school year. Over the past month, nobody has looked at the house. I decided to part company with my realtor awhile ago, but was locked into a contract, so resistance seemed futile anyhow.
As usual, there was a comedy of errors during the selling process, which included:
- My realtor never called me on the phone more than 3 times since April, and my only contact was through post-showing note cards that were sent through the mail.
- I left a note on each side of the basement door that read: “Please Leave Door Open for Cat.” This note was only regarded about 50% of the time. On one such instance, after a morning showing, the cat left a turd in the living room since he was undoubtedly upset to have been kept away from his litter box for an entire day.
- Unfortunately, there was another showing after the cat left his turd in the living room, so a subsequent post-showing note card complained about cat turd in the living room.
- On the subject of post-showing note cards, it is impossible for me to move the road that runs behind my house. Really, I’ve tried. But it just didn’t work out. Sorry.
- One of the first realtors to show the house complained of a gas leak. He wrote a note on the kitchen counter which was undoubtedly seen by every other realtor and prospective buyer who saw the house on that day. Did anyone bother to call my cell phone about this gas leak? No. Was there a gas leak after all? No.
- Bees and boxes in the attic! Apparently, some people didn’t like how I was storing stuff in the attic and complained about it. Jeez, it’s not like I was storing boxes of soap or lard or displaying creepy mannequins up there. It was boxes of stuff that I’ve probably lost track of or empty boxes for my stereo gear, and gosh, why complain about them since they’d be gone when I’d move out? There were some wasps, actually, and I think I killed them all. You know, for a state is inclement as New Hampshire, wasps really seem to like living there. They populate in the spring and summer like you would not believe!
So, yeah, everybody was kind of not into selling my house. That’s cool. I’d kind of thrown up my arms awhile ago and decided to let fate intervene (or not) in the sale of the house. I still had stuff to do in the house, like recording a disc with the band in my basement “studio”. Sure, I could stand to decorate, too, but that’s another issue entirely (I am man. Food good, color bad. etc.). I was certain that the realtor had lost interest and would be calling me to request a price reduction in the near future.
Last week, they called and asked me to call them back. Five days later, they returned my call and suggested a price reduction as the house had received no offers (true statement) and that the market had “corrected itself” and blah blah blah. I suggested that the post-showing note cards had proven an excellent guide and that I’d be happy to put the house on the market next year after I’d had a chance to “correct” all that was covered in the post-showing note cards. I do intend to undertake a Franciscan mission on the house, mind you, but next time I’ll go with a different realtor.
My house comes off the market October 6th.
