There is not a single thing about selling a house that I like. There aren’t even any aspects that I am indifferent to. I loathe every step of this process.
We got our inspection. We have termites.
It’s like my house has head lice.
So, now I have to spend more money that I don’t have. They are asking for a small list of repairs. We’re agreeing to all but one. Wish us luck that they accept because I don’t want to start all over again.
Originally, I thought about writing a post listing the good things about the house selling process and I literally could not come up with anything.
I can, however, come up with 13 things worse than selling a house.
We’re going to eliminate all the biggies like genocide, famine, cancer, president yam head, school shootings, and Nickelback.
They’re still not all that bad, once you add perspective:
- Living in a place you dislike is worse than selling a house. I don’t dislike our house or where we live, but we have lived in
some shitty places. There were rats in the first apartment complex Randy and I lived in. And the hallways smelled like grease and curry. - Performance reviews at work. If you don’t take into account how much longer selling a house takes, then this one totally works. Holy shit, what if performance reviews took as long as selling a house? Stephen King should write a book about that. Horrifying.
- Getting a root canal. Fuck root canals.
- Small talk. I would sell 10 houses if that got me out of all small talk for the rest of my life.
- Being terrified every time you here sirens.
- Being bombarded every day with news of the criminal activity of the president.
- Wearing super uncomfortable shoes.
- Trying to pluck a white eyebrow hair and accidentally pulling out a bunch of brown ones because you can’t really see what you are doing and now you have a bald spot. Okay, that one is not really worse than selling a house, but still…really annoying.
- Arguing conspiracy theories with your young adult child and wondering where the fuck you went wrong.
- Worrying about the inevitable robot invasion.
- Getting a song like Afternoon Delight or the theme from the Banana Splits stuck in your head for days.
- Not being able to fall asleep until you can remember the name of that one restaurant you used to go to near Turkeyfoot Road. They had good chicken wings.
- Obsessively checking the account balances of your credit cards and feeling that cold, sick little drop in your stomach.
I tried, you guys I did.
I tried having a good attitude about selling the house.
I would rather go back and repaint all the walls than go through the selling part.
I am leaning very hard on “this too shall pass” right now. I think I’m going to need to re-watch Buffy again. Already. I just finished a few months ago. Usually, there are at least a few years in between marathons. Buffy is my last defense against anxiety. Buffy calms my head down.
Barleycorn’s. That’s the name of the restaurant. For all that is fucking holy, that was driving me insane.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.
Aaaargh… Termites this too shall pass
I know. Just super frustrating.
I’m with you. Not. Fun. I’m going through the same thing, only instead of termites I have raccoons.
Raccoons. Damn. My mom got one in her attic. It was a nightmare.
I am SO glad you thought of the name of the restaurant. That would have haunted me all day. Did she ever remember? I wonder what it was? I wonder if I could find some chicken wings for lunch?
I kind of want chicken wings right now, too.
I totally understand the suckiness of selling a home. I just sold a house I inherited and my advise is not go down the road I went in fixing lots of small things because it just prolongs the sale!
There are just a handful of things they are asking for.
We are preparing to get our house on the market, the worse and most expensive item to replace will be the roof – but it will all be worth it in the end – looking forward to downsizing from a McMansion in Middletown to a smaller space with less monthly expenses.
That is what we are doing! Heading down to NKY.
Conspiracy theories? Fuck that. Tell him the goddamn termites are conspiring to keep you in the house forever.
We had a rental sold out from under us in the late eighties, and the goddamn crooked realtor had prospective buyers, who he knew good and well would never qualify for the loan, pay for all of the inspections and various other lapses of ethics, while we scrambled around trying not to be homeless…
So, yeah, I don’t have much of a good impression of property sales either.
I could add numerous items to your list, but bumming you out is not the objective here, in fact, quite the contrary.
What a slimy thing to do to people. Damn…
I’m actually thinking I’d be good at selling real estate. It seems like half the job is just calming people down. Well, in my case, it’s probably more than half of Brett’s job.
It’s great that you’ve managed to think of thirteen things that are worse because it sounds like selling a house really sucks. Hopefully finding little bright spots will help. Like knowing that you’ve now forced everybody who comes here to have “Afternoon Delight” stuck in their heads.
Whenever anyone tells me they’ve got a song stuck in their head I tell them I know a cure. And when they ask what it is I sing, “OH MICKEY YOU’RE SO FINE YOU’RE SO FINE YOU BLOW MY MIND HEY MICKEY!”
Works every time as long as Toni Basil’s song isn’t the one they’ve got stuck in their heads.
HAHAHAAH…yeah, that one is an earworm too!
OMG! I have to do this soon…but I will be selling mine..”as is”…dont want to deal with all the bullshit! And the eye brow thing…yes, have dont that many more times than I’d like to admit…so now I just leave the white ones there….
Yeah…I’m going to leave the white ones alone from now on.
Yeah. Fuck root canals.
Right in the face!
I have never sold a house, unless you call “giving” it to my ex via quitclaim “selling” it. That rat bastard could’ve offered me so much more, once he refinanced. But I didn’t ask for more, because frankly, I just wanted OUT. I’m half in the market to BUY but actually I’m not. I have to win the lottery first. Once that’s done, then YES, I WILL be buying a beautiful McMansion in one of our local desirable neighborhoods. YES I WILL.
I have had 3 teeth extracted rather than have root canals. Fuck root canals (in the face, yes).
I have a job interview today! If I don’t get hired, it’ll be because I’m overqualified. Or late to the interview because I’m dickin’ around online. Oh, shit! I gott
(just kidding – your site locked me out of commenting, because I was “requesting too many pages for a human” – like, I was only On This Page, trying to comment! Ennyhoo, I made it in plenty of time and am already home from it… so… overqualified? Mebbe)
My blog has been wonky. Comments aren’t working right.
GOOD LUCK on the job!! Let me know how it goes!! I did a quitclaim when I got divorced the second time. I just wanted to be gone.
I know that feeling. Isn’t it lovely to be in a place of “able to quitclaim” instead of fighting for money? I mean, yeah, we DESERVED some recompense, but the FREEDOM was worth the loss.
I should hear about the job (it’s a gig, really) by tomorrow. It’s wrangling cast for a reality show; five days of casting finals, twelve hour shifts of making sure everyone’s accounted for and directed to meetings and whatnot, all legal paperworks completed and collected. Managing people but from a Production Assistant POV (and pay). It’s okay. Entry level and only five days, but could absolutely lead to more gigs with this production house. The interview went well, but I AM overqualified, and they might choose someone else because of it.
I’m acting in the background of a commercial tomorrow, though, so it’s not like I’m Not Working! W00t W00t!
Wow, that sounds so much more exciting than my job. And my job now apparently includes warehouse work.
Oh no. I haven’t had to do this in awhile, but it definitely sucks. Our buyers got our house at such a great deal. Then they wanted stuff like the fridge or the washer or something. I was like – ‘buy your own shit!’. Good luck! (and weird – I imagine you being great at small talk, because it would be ‘real’ vs. B.S. Hmmm)
I LOVE talking to people. But I don’t want to talk about the weather or what you made for dinner last night (I mean, unless it was amazing) I don’t want to hear petty little beefs you have with the girl from accounting or whatever. Talk about something that means something or tell me something funny or gross or enlightening. I’m just not good at chit chat.
I hate termites, little bastards! Though I’ve never sold a house, I do have an understanding of what it’s like, the stress of switching between places to live. They are renovating my apartment complex. I live on one of the upper floors and I’m preparing to clean out my old apartment to move into a new apartment on one of the lower floors once it gets completely renovated. I also have to get rid of a whole bunch of crap since I’m going into a smaller apartment. At least I know but I’m going to get in there eventually but it’s still frustrating.
Moving is always bullshit. Always.
crap. I read your comment about songs getting stuck for days.
Mine is the theme to Bonanza. Haven’t thought about it in awhile but now it’s back. I expect this could be around for a few days or more …. I have to sell my house in about two years when child support ends btw. I’ve already started mourning. But good to have a sense of humor about it, like you do.
HA!!! Bonanza is one that gets stuck for me, too! Sister!
We are just thinking about selling our house to move to another state and was not looking forward to it. We have a lot of junk! Our stuff, my parents stuff, kids who have moved out of the house junk. Then the tax appraisal value went down this spring! 🙁 Every house in our neighborhood went down between 10 and 17 thousand! So now not sure how much we want to go into fixing it up. I remember 20 years ago trying to sell our old house and having to keep the house clean for any unexpected showings with a 5 and 7 year old.
And thank you very much– NOT– for now I have Afternoon Delight in my head. :/
oooohhh sorry about the ear worm. OMG the junk. We threw away dozens and dozens of garbage bags filled with bullshit stuff that should have been thrown out years ago. I was ruthless.
This statement…
“We’re going to eliminate all the biggies like genocide, famine, cancer, president yam head, school shootings, and Nickelback.”
…just made you my new spirit animal!
The fact that you mentioned, “him who shall not be named” and Nickelback in the same sentence, as negative examples, makes me know we could shoot the shit, barefoot on a back porch, drink of choice (or whatever) in hand, some Al Green or Queens of the Stone Age playing in the background (depending on the mood), discussing what a twatwaffle anxiety is and the other fun places that you find white hairs, besides eyebrows! Shit, I just realized that sounded kind of weird, like I want to date you. All I’m saying is, your real & relatable and I appreciate the fuck out of that!
You have no idea..this is like a warm fuzzy blanket. XO
Hahahahaha. Apologies for laughing, but you’re funny even when you’re freaking out, maybe especially so.
Your young adult and my young adult have something in common. I am damned mad that she no longer thinks I know everything, and therefore cannot talk her out of some of the shit she comes up with.
Thank you! And yeah, if I’m freaking out, that’s when I just do brain dumps. haha.
Fat fingers spelled my own name wrong!
Haha, I do that all the time.