My home sold this week in a finally closed short sale.

I expected to feel relieved. I expected to feel like one more thing was off my plate. I expected to feel…..something.

At first all I felt was nothing. A big emptiness, a void where a house had been. In fact for a whole day after the final paperwork I kept looking for feelings and couldn’t find any.

The morning after it sold I woke up, sat down with my coffee, and burst into uncontrollable sobs. For about forty-five minutes I cried like I had lost my best friend. Grief hits you like that sometimes. You get through the hard part stoically, then when it’s all over it sideswipes you when you aren’t looking.

Losing a home involves grief and mourning, if only for the good times you shared there and for the times you thought were ahead. My youngest reminded me there were also the middle of the night “I’m losing the farm” nightmares, when reality started to creep through my denial. So after all, in the end you just let it go. Like a divorce, you remember the good times, but you also know it wasn’t going to end the way you had hoped in the beginning, and “all the King’s horses and all the King’s men, couldn’t put Humpty together again!”

I am once again listing another “pre-foreclosure”. Well, it actually starts with a seller who is hoping beyond hope that we will magically time travel back two or three years to when their house was worth what they now need to sell it  for.

I tell them the truth(ain’t gonna happen!), but bear with them as we list it for a price that would satisfy all lien holders, even though they would walk away with nothing. That is their first adjustment. The days of a big check at the closing table to help fund their move are gone.

Then after about a month with no calls to even see the property, they will usually move to Phase Two: being willing to drop the price and fill out the Short Sale paperwork. The denial is over and now it is time to start trying to deal with the problem head on. Seeing if we can find a buyer who is willing to pay enough (and wait forever!) to satisfy the bank and let them out of their mortgage.

Phase Three is when we have a contract and after three or four months of frequent calls to numerous people at the mortgage company we feel like we are losing our minds from lack of follow-through and attention. Why is it so difficult to make a decision about this offer? Because it is complicated, that’s why. The lawyers are now involved, the Loss Mitigation team, the second mortgage people (there usually is one….that’s why this is so difficult in the first place), are there going to be tax ramifications?

Trying to make a decision as to where to move your family, when to surrender the property, what  will it do to your credit, will you have to go bankrupt? This is where the family is caught, between a rock and a hard place, for maybe months or even a year of this process.

All I can do is offer comfort, encouragement, keep them up-to-date on what’s happening (or not), and always have a shoulder to lean on for various venting needs against the more than occasional idiots they will encounter, and be a person who understands what they are going through. In the midst of it all is a lot of self-recrimination for getting ourselves in this position in the first place…. I guess that’s why I am able to empathize. I am in the same boat. Anyone else need a bucket to help bail?

Making a living as a Realtor is something most people don’t understand completely. They may think it is just a matter of picking up huge checks at the closing table for very little work. But it is truly a very misunderstood form of income.

It is perhaps one of the very few jobs where you do all your best work up front, never knowing if you will be paid for it. No matter how hard you try you can’t make every deal work. Often there are last minute problems with the house, with the conditions the lender sets for the borrower, a change of job circumstances, and a myriad of other things that can cause a contract to end up not closing and most times it happens within the very last week.

Prior to this time, the Realtor has shown the buyer numerous homes, written possibly more than one contract, negotiated terms and prices, met home inspectors at the house, requested and supervised repairs if needed, worked with lenders, closing agents and other agents to keep everything moving along smoothly, and kept in constant contact with their client. Much time and often a lot of gas and mileage have already been spent.

Then something falls apart, and with amazing skill and diligence the Realtor does their best to salvage the contract for their party if they still want to proceed, always trying to bring about win/win circumstances for both sides. Sometimes it is not possible to save the situation.

Then there is the heartbreak on the part of their client to deal with, all the while the Realtor is bound to notice that after six weeks of hard work, there will be no paycheck for them that month. If the buyers are ready, they will resume the hunt from the beginning and start all over to find another suitable home. When one finally does close, the Realtor is  paid, and many think overpaid for their services. Only the Realtor knows how many times they showed up and basically worked for nothing and why that commission check has very little to do with that particular sale and everything to do with maintaining their skills, education, licenses, and optimism through year after year of many disappointments and some successes.

After all is said and done, everyone else in the transaction still has a paycheck. Everyone except the Realtor, without whom the entire process would have been impossible, because someone had to be available to make all the bits and pieces come together. They have no salary, and their gas and phone time has to be paid for regardless. So if they ever seem a bit weary after things get turned upside down, please appreciate that they are always trying to put others needs ahead of their own, and very few people would show up for work everyday and do their absolute best, with no guarantee they will ever be paid for it.

It takes a certain kind of person, and a lot of dedication to stay committed to a full time real estate career, particularly in a down market as we are experiencing now. But that is exactly the person you want to accompany you on your search for your new home.

The fact that an exclamation point almost always accompanies that word is very telling in itself. As though it is an order! Perhaps because we so often get to the point of near heart attack before we give ourselves permission to slow down and smell the flowers. We burn ourselves out trying to deserve it.

I am sure that isn’t everyone, particularly those who still have grandparents who remember a time when stores weren’t open on Sundays (and nights), where families sat down to a meal together every evening, where the family vacation was to take a camper to the beach, not a flight to see ten cities in five days!

I am wondering if this recession will bring a return to some of the sharing and slowing down of families and friends. Maybe we will find more time to share food and fun. When we cannot go out and spend money, we tend to give ourselves permission to do a puzzle together, have a potluck get-together, have a picnic or plant a garden. It will be interesting to see where we are in a year or two and how we cope with the changes.

Sometimes you just have to go with your gut.  As much research as you do, you can not prevent everything that might happen  based on the past, although if we could it might be helpful.

So it is with a house. As many tests as you get, as many second opinions or home inspections, somewhere it still comes down to your gut. Do I care enough to take my chances on this one? I see it all the time with foreclosures. Houses don’t come with manuals or even a history of what’s been done….what a great idea if they did.  HouseFax! For fifteen years as a Realtor I have often remarked that I wish they came with some kind of notes as to what previous owners were thinking when they did certain things.

If they did you would know, when you finally start stripping that horrible ivy wallpaper off the kitchen walls Saturday morning, that previous owners (and how many had there been?) had put their selection right over two more layers of previous wallpapers (because that was easier than stripping the old) and you were in for two days of work instead of the two hours you had managed to set aside. A HouseFax would have told you that!

Anyway, at some point, with as much knowledge as you can glean, you take the plunge and say I’m in. Whatever comes, I will deal. And in the majority of cases, we work it out with our home. I don’t know of many House Counselors, but I guess if there were such a profession, I could be in it. I certainly have done my share of pre-aquisition counseling over the years!

It  happens. You find a house, you fall in love with it, you start seeing your life attached to it. You proceed through all the steps leading to closing, you’re almost there….and, wham! Something happens. It needs a new roof and the seller won’t or can’t put one on. The money that was coming from a state fund runs out and there goes your ability to purchase it. That’s what happened to my young buyer today.

It’s terribly hard to find the words to make it feel better. I was suddenly aware of similar situations where people are all ready for something that doesn’t happen. The worst I can think of is a miscarriage. Someone is happily going along preparing for a change in their life,  full of anticipation and making room in their heart when suddenly it vanishes, taking all their dreams and plans with it.

The rest of the world may never even know about the ‘almost’ happening. But for those who do, there is heartache to process, grief,  and perhaps anger or a wondering if anyone could have done something different to change the outcome. If someone tells them to just go find another , it sounds really insensitive and  isn’t what they want to hear. So it is with losing a house. You don’t just go replace it. Nor a beloved pet, nor a spouse. You may eventually find another, perhaps even soon, but not without trying to figure out what just happened and how it has affected your life.

There will be another house, but never quite that house. Everything we commit our hearts to brings its own uniqueness into our lives, and leaves its mark forever when it leaves.

Right now I would like to see the whole country do what I just did, change their party affiliation to Independent. I think both parties have gotten so far from their original principles that we should examine everything that everyone says to see if it lines up with our own beliefs. I don’t want either side to assume they had me at hello!

I want things to make sense and I want the truth. Simple. Give me that and I will decide who gets my vote….and I will do that every year! No assumptions about where my vote will go so the polls can’t give incorrect information to mislead people before an election. What if we were all Independents? Who would financially support this madness that continues in Washington? They would once again be ‘dependent’ on us….as Representatives of us should be. The lobbyists would not be able to control everything as they do now.

As long as they keep both sides fighting each other, as a country we will ultimately lose. I learned this at a great cost in a divorce  where my child was the unwitting pawn. When the two sides chose to stop opposing each other, the “family” in the largest sense won. Personally, if we made that same choice and took our minds and  then our votes back to our own  safe-keeping, I think the country in the largest sense would benefit.

I don’t know about you, but next to lying, hypocrisy is the thing I most despise. The Webster’s New World dictionary says it means : “a pretending to be what one is not, or to feel what one does not; a pretense of virtue.”

Lately I am hearing the same people who applauded vile rhetoric against a former president, now screaming that it is not OK to say anything negative or voice any protest against a current congress or administration. Whereas community action and organization was considered an amazing and wonderful vocation and an experience to be commended, it is now being referred to as an angry mob of well dressed people. Is community action only for poorly dressed people?

Is there something wrong with wanting to know the facts? Is reading a bill in it’s entirety wrong, just because those who represent us don’t think it is worth their time to read it? I went to college and I want to read it. It tells me what will happen to my health care for the rest of my life. Much of it is truly terrifying when I read it, but if you don’t you can just act surprised when it happens, I guess.  I have been a victim of things I didn’t bother to read in my lifetime and I will not do it again.Why is  having an opinion which differs from a current administration  somehow blasphemy in America? I can remember a former First Lady, now Secretary of State, screaming at the top of her lungs that it was the essence of patriotism to disagree. I really don’t understand why what’s right for one side is wrong when the other side does it.  Either it’s OK or it isn’t but how can you say it’s wrong when you just argued that it was right?  To me that is the essence of hypocrisy.

To thine own self be true was my Dad’s motto, and I believe that we all need to independently make sure that all the facts are backing our beliefs right now, and be willing to look at all of them without prejudice and decide with our own hearts and minds what the truth is. We have left that up to too many others for far too long.

I love to work with people who would find their dog at the humane shelter. They are great people to accompany on a house- hunting adventure, because they are secretly looking for a home that needs them as much as they need a home. They are looking to restore and rebuild what may have been forgotten over time, for a place to plant a garden, put up a swing set,  hang a hammock…ways to turn a house into the home they always wanted.

A few months after our dog  Schatzee died, my older son recognized we were still a two-dog family  in need of a second dog, so off we went  to the humane shelter to see if one had our name on it. Sure enough, after wandering all around not finding any we connected to, we found one who had practically given up on finding his family. Very thin, he stayed in his corner eagerly awaiting the dinner bowl. Somehow he just clicked with all of us and later that day with our other dog, Gus, before we were allowed to take him home. The shelter needed to see that we were a match and that it would be good for all of us (he had some difficulty socializing and had a lot of fears). Ten years and lots of love and attention later Jet has been a wonderful addition to our family, and he and I have healed together in many ways.

I guess the fact that I have sold plenty of foreclosures over the past fifteen years is testimony to the fact I am drawn to both people and houses that have seen their share of difficulties. I love seeing the light come on in someone’s eyes as they realize they have the perfect skills for the necessary restorations on a particular house….it is a sign we are finally in the right place. When we don’t even notice  we’ve been hanging out in the kitchen or the back yard for an hour without seeing the time go by, that pretty much seals the deal that this is the house they should put an offer on. You know what is so amazing? They almost always get it for the price they offered…they were the people for that particular house and it had been waiting for them to find it…just like that puppy at the pound who knows when his family arrives. Wow! Now that’s what makes my life exciting every day of the week!

I have always loved being in real estate. I guess because it lets me help people find their way home. I get to go on a journey with people to find the place they can center their lives and begin to relax, re-creating the space in their own way to serve themselves and their families. And if they continue to meet the obligation and commitment they signed up for, no one will ever kick them out!

Everyone’s home is their castle, be it a condo near water,  a townhouse near their children’s school, a mobile home near family or a cabin out in the woods. It never has to be the biggest or the prettiest or the most expensive, it just has to feel like home, a place where we can be ourselves. Since this is different for every one of us, the journey always takes me on a new and different path. That is why I love it! Houses are as different as people. They come in all shapes and sizes and a myriad of colors. They are old and young and in between. They are sometimes in great shape for their age, and sometimes have acquired a  handicap or two. Often they can be updated with some loving care, and sometimes their problems just need the right person with whom they will find love and acceptance.