It’s time to leave my country home. Am I ready?
From cleaning to staging, it takes a lot of work to make a house good to sell
‘‘ Whether the real estate gods are polishing their smiles is uncertain … while the supply shortage is good news to sellers, it can trap you as a buyer. I’ll be both hunter and hunted.
CAROLA VYHNAK
Freelance writer Carola Vyhnak is leaving her four-acre country home north of Cobourg, Ont. for a smaller place in a nearby town. She’s keeping a diary about her downsizing journey. In the first instalment, she describes getting ready to list her place:
It’s hard to toss your family into a rain-soaked dumpster and feel good about it. But they gotta go.
I’ve kept the best ones for sentimental reasons, but the big bag of old photos will be an extra burden on moving day. Still, it’s a sad farewell to the discarded loved ones joining other people’s detritus in the bin.
Decluttering is the first step along the road of downsizing from my peaceful, rural home to a bungalow in town. Every year the renowned rolling hills of Northumberland County where I live seem to get steeper, so it’s time for this country mouse with a bad knee to find a smaller nest close to urban conveniences.
Whether the real estate gods are polishing their smiles is uncertain. The market is shifting as homebuyers come out of winter hibernation to sniff around low inventories and recently stabilized interest rates. But while the supply shortage is good news to sellers, it can trap you as a buyer. I’ll be both hunter and hunted.
With the big purge of house contents finished, I tackle the fun stuff, plugging nail holes, touching up paintwork and deep-cleaning grubby spots.
It takes an hour just to scrub the film off neglected shower walls in the downstairs bathroom using a Googled formula of vinegar, baking soda and dish soap.
Then I YouTube my way through removing the oven door to clean a six-year-old drip between the glass panels, and through bravely replacing a broken ceiling light fixture, in the dark.
Wading through the pool of realtors to list with is another enlightening experience, this enjoyed at the hands of my chatty massage therapist. Kneading my tense trapezius muscles, she brands one agent a cutthroat shark who swims by their own rules while hinting that another is a mild-mannered minnow who couldn’t sell a fishbowl.
I meet with four agents to discuss services, strategies and pricing, but with few comparable properties under $1 million, their valuations span a $200,000-range.
Jacqueline Pennington, a leading