Crazy Like Us
Jul 26, 2020
I sold a house this week.
I know what you’re thinking: are you now selling residential real estate? Nope. I’m still only selling commercial real estate.
But I sold a house this week. Our house. The one we’ve lived in for 17 years. And a lot of people think we were CRAZY for selling.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
Interestingly, though, when we bought it, people thought we were CRAZY for buying it.
There was so much work to be done on the house. It was built in 1953. It was a large house with 1 bathroom…because that’s how they built them in the 1950’s. The whole house needed updating. Some of the house still needed to be finished. Read: part of the basement had concrete floors. (And I mean foundation concrete floors, not distressed, cool-vibe concrete floors.)
The yard was incredible, but big. And a little over-grown when we bought it.
The house was well-kept, but it certainly needed some TLC and some money to make it ours.
We made an offer on the house on a Wednesday, and the sellers countered at $10,000 more than we offered. We spent the entire weekend fretting over the $10,000. It was a financial stretch for us. We were getting married and spending a lot of money on the wedding. But we ultimately decided we could make the numbers work, and closed on the house 2 months before we were married. Because of the amazing backyard, we moved the wedding reception to the backyard.
Flash forward 17 years. We remodeled every square inch of the house. When we finished, there was a gourmet kitchen, a basement set up perfectly for entertaining, and 3 full bathrooms…a far cry from the 1 shared bathroom in the house when we bought it. We added a 4-car garage. We terraced the back hill. We completely transformed the front yard.
Other than sitting in the exact same spot with the same address, we changed everything about the house. It was a great house!
And this week, we sold it.
And just like 17 years ago, people thought we were CRAZY for selling. Honestly, it’s one of the reasons we kept the move under wraps for so long. (It might have been one of the worst-kept secrets in town, but we told only a handful of people we were moving before we actually put the house on the market.)⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We sold the house and moved into a brand-new townhome. I like to say we “right-sized.” There is less house to clean and furnish. The homeowners association maintains nearly all of the outdoor space, which means we will no longer spend hours and hours on the weekend mowing the lawn and doing yard work.
One more perk of selling: we no longer have a mortgage. We made enough money on the sale of the house to pay off that mortgage and the bridge loan on the townhome. We even paid off the Sun Valley condo. Debt-free is not a terrible place to be.
Which brings me back to being crazy. People thought we were crazy for buying; then, crazy for selling.
But that’s the thing about dreams and living your life on your own terms. Your life doesn’t need to make sense to anyone but YOU. You have your reasons for doing something. It doesn’t matter what everyone else thinks. It doesn't matter that they disagree with your decision. It doesn't even matter that they think you are CRAZY.
Drown out the doubters and the nay-sayers and the poo-pooers. Let them think what they want. Let them have their opinions. They're not the ones living your life. It's YOUR life. Forge your own path. Make your own decisions. Call your own shots.
On Tuesday night, we popped a bottle of the good bubbles, and toasted 17 great years at the old house. Yesterday, we spent the afternoon at the pool instead of mowing the lawn. So far, our crazy choices seem to fit our lifestyle quite well.
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