Unpredictable is the best word that I can think of to describe this journey. Seriously.
As you know, last Fall we decided to put our house on the market as we prepare for our big move to East Africa. We worked for a couple of months making some much-needed updates, finishing projects we had started over the course of five years, and doing some serious deep cleaning before we (and our Realtors) declared it “market ready.” Then the truly hard part came…actually sticking the sign in the yard and allowing strangers to wander through our home, peek into our closets, and even consider buying our house. It was absolutely awful, and REALLY scary when we had an actual buyer interested! However, we were totally prepared to sell the house to be ready to move.
But something strange and very unpredictable happened instead. We didn’t sell the house. We had a LOT of showings and we even had someone who was very seriously interested, but who couldn’t get financing in this tough economy. Then, as mid-February rolled around and our listing was set to expire in just a matter of weeks, I started really feeling strongly that we shouldn’t re-list the house. We already had the papers drawn up for the new listing and everything, but I was feeling pretty set that we shouldn’t do it. I kept quiet until just a few days before the old listing expired, and when I finally told Blaise what I had been feeling, he AGREED. He said that for more than a month he had really been feeling the same thing, but he assumed that it was just that same struggle against his attachment to our house…so he ignored it until I said something.
Once we both agreed and prayed about it, we emailed our Realtor and asked that our house not be re-listed the following week. And just like that we took our house off of the market and each took a GIANT breath as we prepared for the dreaded alternative…RENTING.