First housing viewing

[selenay]

The house listing went live yesterday morning (and the photographer did a great job, I have to say) and we got our first viewing yesterday evening.

*sigh*

Mum and I had been hoping that yesterday would be a calm, no rushing, no house prep day, because why would anyone want a viewing on the first day? We were supposed to get 24 hours notice! There were two job adverts with closing dates today that I wanted to get submitted. I'd done a rough draft of the first on Monday evening and barely made notes on the second, but I felt confident that with an entire evening I could get them done easily.

Mum got a call just before I got home (late) from work to say the buyers and their agent would be there in three hours, we needed to clear out by 8pm.

Argh.

So I sat down with my laptop to get that second application written while Mum figured out a meal for herself that could be prepared with no smell (the only acceptable cooking smells are coffee, apple pie, and bread). I'd already eaten a cooked meal at lunch. Mum settled on beans on toast. I took a break before hitting submit, so I could clear out my room while Mum cleared out my bathroom, then I proof-read all over again and hit submit with 30 minutes to spare before we had to exit.

Those thirty minutes were spent shifting the remaining personal items out of sight (bye bye soap and loo roll, bye bye lunch bag I still haven't found) and settling the cats in their (padlocked) crate. Then we grabbed our bags of portable valuables (the realtor is still offended we feel the need to do that, I'm still annoyed she's being so clueless), climbed into the car and drove off...to sit in a carpark for an hour reading. Joy.

Got home near nine and spent a while digging out stuff we'd put away, so that I could do things like set up the coffee maker for the morning and have an alarm clock to wake me up. Apparently we didn't get everything sorted out, because I still spent some time in the morning hunting for towels and shampoo and ended up with only enough time for a spoonful of shreddies and some coffee for breakfast so I've been starved all morning. Grr and all that.

Then Mum and I both collapsed in chairs, drank soothing cups of tea, and went to bed feeling like a wall had fallen on us. Or I did, I don't know about her, although judging by how late (by her standards) she got up and how groggy she looked, I suspect she's also under a wall. I slept incredibly badly thanks to multiple bad dreams waking me up, thinking I was supposed to be somewhere else and was running late. Thanks, brain.

Have to say, that was not what I wanted to do yesterday. And apparently the 24 hour notice thing is going to be laughable. Yay. Mum is planning to talk to the realtor about this, because while it's doable for an evening showing, it'll be impossible during the day when I'm at work with the car. There's nowhere to go on foot from our house, even if Mum wasn't laden down with all the portable valuables and electronics. I look forward to finding out how that conversation went.

It'll get better when we've had practice at the quick exit/late return thing, right?

House selling is the worst.

Comments

[green_knight]

Ok, I have no idea how Canada works, but how much is being able to live in your own home worth to you? All of this song and dance sounds *ridiculous*, and how many people do you know who are actually turned off by anything short of squalor?

(I once had a rental contract terminated because apparently buyers were put off by my possessions. The property did not sell for another 18 months. Yeah, right.)

She's working for you. You are not under any obligation not to own toilet rolls, or even to leave the house when people are viewing. Don't allow her to intimidate you.

[selenay]

The problem is that this is just how house selling works in Canada. Staying in the house is not an option, no matter who the realtor is, and the same goes for personal possessions. If we don't do these things, any realtor we try to use will probably walk out on us because we're flying in the face of convention and being difficult sellers. We're not willing to manage the entire house sale on our own, so we have to put up with all this ridiculousness because it's what any realtor will require. It seems incredibly weird and awful to me, coming from the UK, but to everyone here it's normal and they don't get why I find it awful *sigh*

[lilacsigil]

This is all so bizarre (apart from taking your valuables with you, that's sensible). I mean, I understand being tidy and not having too much on display, but the LOO ROLL???

[catspaw]

Ick, sounds ghastly! (And makes me wonder what Canadian estate agents imagine people wipe their arses on.)