When You Don’t Want to Sell Your Castle

Our home is our castle. We have worked hard, we have been paying it off for years, adding our own special touches. Our children may have grown up in this home. There have been Christmas days, birthday parties, general every day days. Maddening rushes to leave the home on time for school, for work or to get away for the weekend. It’s home. It’s safe. It’s secure.

Sometimes it happens that one person is ready to leave the home before anyone else. Getting everybody else on the same page is stressful and can create arguments and an atmosphere of resentment and betrayal.

Sometimes you all know that the time has come to sell the home but there are countless obstacles in the way. One more Christmas, there is work that must be done or there is so much decluttering to do it’s overwhelming.

My role as your real estate advocate encompasses all the emotional, the stress, the conversations and all the ‘getting the house ready’. I have been involved in so many house sales and each one has been a difficult decision in some way or another.

Reassurance and talking it out, cups of tea and exploring options. I am unbiased. I understand that everyone has a right to feel safe and to be heard and telling your story to me can guide us to the underlying stress point.

In the worst case scenarios, a court will dictate what has to happen. In most cases, we sort it out without the legal bills.

Sometimes people want reassurance as to where they will live, what will it be like, and what will they be able to do there. This is a problem for many of us as we age. Change is hard. Will we be able to do our normal activities? How will we know that we have made the right choice?

“How will we be able to afford it?” Another stress point. If you have paid off your current home or close to it, then you have probably been in the home for quite some time. A tendency to relate the value of the home to what you paid for it 30 years versus the costs involved in buying a new place and selling the old. The sums involved can be overwhelming.

Start with a conversation. Having a third party present usually means that people are more mindful of their words and anger. A third party who can work through every obstacle, using their experience and knowledge, is incredibly helpful.

It doesn’t always work out or sometimes it can take a long time. That’s okay, that’s perfectly normal.