Selling Our Condo

We buy and sell lots of properties. We do so much volume selling our own properties that as a real estate agent, I often rank in the top 10% of agents worldwide (that says more about the industry than it does about me). And that’s without representing anyone but our own family! Most of these home sales are unemotional on our part. We do the work. We get paid and we pay our taxes. We move on to the next project.

Today, we closed up on a different type of transaction. As part of our plan to hit the road, we sold our primary residence…a condo in Northern Virginia.

The Purchase

In the fall of 2013, we were recently engaged with a wedding date about a year out. Our lease came up for renewal and the management company wanted something crazy like a $150 rent bump on a $1,400 monthly tab. We got the hint. They gave us 60 days notice. It seemed crazy to keep renting when we thought we knew everything about real estate investing already.

That weekend we went house shopping. Mind you, we had just moved to the DC area from Michigan and knew nothing about the neighborhoods. But as we stumbled around, we saw a foreclosure that had just hit the market. It looked like a deal so we low-balled it and were surprised when the bank only asked for $800 more than we bid. Less than 30 days later, we were homeowners.

Four Years of Life

We would stay in that home for the next four years. We renovated the kitchen. Installed a paver patio. Renovated the bath. Installed a new HVAC system. But more importantly, this is where we built our “DC life.” We built three different businesses in that home. We had friends over for dinner almost every weekend. Bart and Growler had their places there. It was our base. We knew all our neighbors and they knew us.

Preparing for Sale

You should have pleasant memories of the past–that’s a sign that you are living your life right. And we have nothing but pleasant memories of that condo. But growth requires movement. And it was time for us to go.

Land appreciates. It grows in value over time. The structure that you build on it depreciates. It falls in value over time. While the land under our condo may have appreciated. In the time that we lived in the unit, the components had begun to age and depreciate. We knew that getting top dollar for our unit would require a renovation. This is a hard concept to grasp.

Looking at your home from the perspective of an unattached Buyer is difficult, if not impossible. That scratch on a cabinet door might be a memory to you, but to them, it’s just deferred maintenance. That yellow accent wall might be what you loved about your home office, but without your context, they are unlikely to see it that way. We have to appeal to our Buyers. And that means letting go of your own emotional attachments as a Seller.

We have the benefit of reviewing years of Buyer feedback on our sales. These are often brutal comments that no one would ever make to your face. But if you can take that brutality, you’ll learn what Buyers want…what they are able to look past, and what they are going to hammer you on.

Marketing The Property

We followed our traditional process where Eugene lists the property with professional photography and some basic staging. We priced a couple percentage points higher than our best comp and had an offer in hand after the first weekend.

A quick word here about negotiations. A typical real estate transaction is negotiated three times. Once, prior to ratification. Second, at inspection. Third, at appraisal. Many Sellers think they are done at that first negotiation. In fact, all you have done here is set the tone for the negotiations to come. Give things away too easily in that first negotiation and the other party is sure to hammer you at the other two opportunities. Be too much of a hard ass and a smart Buyer may walk away. It’s an art, not a science.

We follow this logic in this transaction and it generally produced a good result. But it required a detachment from the transaction that is atypical of a transaction where you are buying or selling your own home. If you’re not careful, this will cause a wave of emotions later down the road.

A Bittersweet Sale

We were very focused on the transaction and running the process properly. We received top dollar for the property. We managed the details until the very end. We were so caught up in the details that we were unprepared for what happened next. Our home….that place where we first brought Bart into. That place where we first met our friends and their significant others…where we had lazy Saturday afternoons. That place where we spent our first few years of married life. It was sold. Gone.

We had achieved the result we had set out for. And we couldn’t help but feel a moment of grief. We were so caught up in the technical details that we almost missed the moment of a giant chapter closing in our lives.