The real estate market, month one

Our house has been on the market for a month now. And it's been... very disconcerting and frustrating.

We've had 11 showings, including one family who came twice, and were visibly quite in love with the place and the neighbourhood, but then didn't follow up with an offer (officially they're still "thinking about it", they haven't bought anywhere else either). We've had people who were quite obviously never going to buy our house (because their budget was much higher, they really wanted an open kitchen, or then didn't want a swimming pool -all of this, along with the price, dimensions, all related information, and about 20 pictures, is may I remind you very transparently displayed in our listing).

We've had people who were clearly a wrong fit, like an elderly couple who spoke no French nor English and left after two minutes without saying anything (it probably didn't help that when you first come in, you immediately have two flights of stairs). Then we've had people who liked the house but were only starting their search, weren't ready to buy, and I guess didn't love our place enough to stop the presses and do whatever it takes to get it immediately (which is what we did ourselves).

Even though I'm getting better at it with each visit, it still takes me about 2 1/2 hours to get the place ready every time (and that's on top of it being already staged and decluttered from top to bottom). So we found ourselves getting up at 6 on a Saturday morning to tidy up and get the kids in the car by 9 while we wait for them to show up -45 minutes late, we found ourselves at the hardware store at 8 PM with two tired kids, including LP who was quite sick and didn't understand why we couldn't go home yet, we found ourselves eating out more often that we're used to when showings coincides with meal times. We found ourselves coming home 10 minutes early to find an agent and the two buyers waiting by the door in the pouring rain (what a first impression), me with bags full of the flowers I had gone out to get. We found ourselves driving around our neighbourhood frantically for 40 minutes, hoping that the people wouldn't see our car repeatedly passing by, wondering why the hell it took them so long (the usual showing lasts about 10 minutes). Clearly, we had not realized selling a house was this involved. On weeks when we have several showings, it completely scr*ws up our routine, but then, on weeks when we don't, we worry. We feel like we're not completely at home anymore, and we're not really good at this.

And I guess it was silly of us to imagine that it would sell almost immediately, based on the fact that it has been the case for every single one of the nearby houses in the past couple of years. But in the past few months, a shift has occurred, from a sellers' market to a buyers' one. So our timing is not quite perfect (of course!), and there are suddenly lots of other houses for sell nearby, more so than ever before (of course!) None have sold in the past month though, so at least this is reassuring.

Our agent is not at all worried, and we still have plenty of time before our official occupation date of April 1st. Our hopes of moving before the winter, though, are rapidly waning.

I find it a little difficult not to take it personally, which might be the biggest problem. Honestly, the house has never looked so great -clean, functional, pleasant to live in, warm, uncluttered, with our style really shining through. I am loving this, and wish we could take inspiration for our next house, although M the clutterbug "misses his stuff" (of course). We have made all kinds of improvements in the last six weeks or so, and realized that we should have done all of this way before (seriously why didn't we???) We have worked so hard on our home over the years (upstairs bathroom reno being one example), and it is a million miles away from the dated, not very appealing, unmaintained, slightly sad property M bought nearly ten years ago. But buyers of course don't see that... And they always tend to focus on the three negative things instead of the 50 positive ones. I don't blame them, everyone is the same... But I still see it as a bit of a rejection every time.

To tell you the truth, this time of our life strangely reminds me of when we were trying (and for a long time, failing) to conceive LP. There's the same feeling of being vulnerable and a little trapped, of really wanting something to happen but having absolutely no control over it, of knowing that the next stage is so much better but we can't be there yet. There are the falses hopes you have almost in spite of yourself, followed by the harsh return to reality, and the need to start over again. There's the time that goes by so quickly, and makes us feel more and more powerless. And more than anything there's my neurotic side flaring up again, waking me up at night.

To be continued...