Hi ya!

I hope you enjoyed our post with tips for selling your home yesterday!

Today, I wanted to share a few lessons we learned along the emotional and stressful road of selling our home.

Thankfully, our home was a “hot property” (our agent’s words, not mine, but I obviously agreed! Hi Elizabeth!) and we were flooded with showings as soon as our home hit the market.

We were excited, hopeful, and confident that God would sell our home quickly.

We had two offers fairly quickly, and went under contract with the one we accepted. We were to close the exact day that I had prayed for all along because since I worked out of our home, I needed to utilize my studio space for a late summer wedding.

A few weeks later we learned that the buyers wanted to back out because they felt our 2 bedroom home wasn’t big enough for their family of FIVE! When our agent told us that, I was like, “well of course it isn’t big enough!”

So lesson #1: It’s not a done deal, until it’s a done deal. Just because you are under contract doesn’t mean everything will go through, so just keep praying and trusting the Lord to get you through to closing. We prayed for this everyday!

Thankfully, the buyer that God had picked out to purchase our home came along quickly after all that was sorted out, and after one counteroffer we were under contract again. Praise Him.

After the inspection was done, there were five pages of notes from it. Which was crazy simply because when we bought the home, the inspector said “all is well, it’s a great house!” However, the buyer only requested a few things to be fixed that included some electrical, plumbing, a/c, and woodwork.

I wanted to make sure the buyer felt taken care of so we decided to fix everything she wanted, simply because I knew she could technically walk away from the house. So I had various vendors related to the above items requested to be fixed come by for quotes.

Lesson #2: Contractors/professionals don’t care for inspectors. Y’all we had 3 different business owners that came and gave quotes and did work that commented and rolled their eyes at the inspection report, apparently this guy was most likely new or just inexperienced! Some of the things reported were against code, or just plain not necessary to be reported. (If you are an inspector or you know an inspector, please note that this isn’t a hate post against all inspectors, this is just what we learned from our experience!)

Lesson #3: No one is in a hurry. Oh my goodness from the appraisal that wasn’t completed until a few days before our first closing date, to the buyer’s lender taking all kinds of time with the “paperwork”, to waiting for everything to finalize…no one was in a hurry to get the house closed. Patience is a hard lesson for most of us, especially when you are having to pay mortgage payments on top of rent in your new city, and maintaining all the utilities on two properties. But, the Lord continued to provide the means for us to make all the payments we had to make! That’s the key, He always provides.

Lesson #4: Local lenders are best. Our agent said it perfectly, “When you use a local lender, you can literally walk into their office and ask what’s going on? But, when it’s a bank or a nationally based one like the buyer’s, we have to rely on email and phone calls.” So, before you accept an offer on your home, ask about the buyer’s lender just so you can be educated.

Lesson #5. You don’t get to know what your home appraises for! This one really frustrated me. I didn’t understand why that had to be private and we weren’t allowed to know. Yes the buyer had to pay for it to be done, but it was still our home at the time. I was simply just curious if the house had increased any in the 8.5 years we lived in it, but alas we will never know.

So there ya have it, 5 lessons we learned from selling our home!

Most of these seem negative in the sense they were frustrating to learn and go through, but we stayed confident and faithful the Lord would teach us what He needed to, and that was to just totally surrender. I kept praying, “You are the only one who can get us to closing! Only You!” And He did friends!

Hopefully, these help atleast give you a head’s up or educate you on the process of selling if you plan to do so in the future!

xoxo, Tamara