Shortcuts

The same driving force (or lack thereof) behind my need to find the route of least effort (see my InterNat post), helped me sell my last house really fast. It was a credit to my laziness (and my hard-working agent!) that my house sold within 8 days, with extremely little time or work on my part.

Everyone knows that from the point of view of the person selling a home, the most tiresome and troublesome task after getting the initial staging done is the constant running around and cleaning up every time a potential buyer wants to view your home. That pain in the butt task alone can deter people from taking the plunge, and deciding to sell.

Unless you're a single person who works late and eats out a lot, chances are you are a lot like most families and make one heck of a mess, in a short amount of time, just by living! I thought I was the only one, for the longest time, and loathed when people (even family) would show up unannounced, for fear that they would discover my "dirty little secret" - I was a slob.

Truth be told (and with me, it always is), while I'm a clean person (bathrooms and kitchens are cleaned and vacuum gets passed once a week), I'm horribly messy. I believe there to be a huge distinction between the two. I am an accumulator of "stuff". Clothes, toys and books, mostly, and between me and the other three pigs, within 30 minutes, our house can look like total chaos!

So when I listed my last home for sale, knowing the work involved for each showing, I packed up my husband, child and baby, took only what we needed plus ALL the baby gear (you know how quickly your home can go from House Beautiful to Gymboree with all that brightly-coloured paraphernalia!), and moved into my Mom's place for a few weeks. I told my agent he could go hog-wild with open houses and showings, and took off!

My agent was happy with the arrangement, because he didn't have to instruct the office to call me to set up an appointment each time a prospective buyer showed interest, lowering the risk of buyers losing interest if they couldn't obtain an appointment right away. I was happy with the arrangement, because once I got to my Mom's, showing my home was completely stress-free for my family and me.

Of course, not everyone is in the position to have a second home to go to, as I did, but for the sake of helping make even one family's selling experience a little less stressful, I offer my story as a suggestion :-)