Selling isn't for sissies

Sometimes you do things for your spouse -- big things. My husband, Jason, was offered a good job in Duluth. And while it's counterintuitive to move someplace colder on purpose, the job's benefits have been laid out like bread crumbs leading north. Despite many reservations, I agreed.

This past New Year's Eve, we broke the news to neighbors and friends and by the end of our party, had a handshake deal to sell our house. We were thrilled -- until the deal broke apart a couple of months later.

By then, Jason had moved to Duluth and we were stuck trying to get a house ready for public consumption. During the weeks that we believed our house was sold, the market seemed to go from sour to curdled. Empowered buyers expected more for less, so we got busy doing all the projects that we had been denying ourselves. We tiled, we painted, we worked with a stager and, goodness, did we pitch unneeded items. The stager brought in her lovely things and our house looked like a magazine cover.

Minutes after the photos hit the MLS, we had a steady stream of showings. I figure I was staging my house 10-plus hours a week and spending nearly as much time hanging out with my children in public venues. My own workload suffered along with my parenting.

Then the feedback hit. Generally speaking, buyers' opinions ranged from "it's OK" to "your house isn't all that" to remarks that were downright hostile. Buyers would write their sour comments while eating my real estate candy, and toss their wrappers around the house. Twice I came home to find the kids' toys played with and not put away and my door left unlocked. I had gone beyond feeling hurt to outright bullied.

The stress of weekday solo parenting while living in a fishbowl was starting to show and I nursed serious misgivings about the whole venture.

"Can't you just quit the job and come home?" I pleaded to my husband. My hair began falling out and because my husband was away and felt helpless, he'd leave me offerings of chocolate in unexpected places around the house. I accused him of wanting me to gain so much weight I'd feel obligated to leave town.

Forty-two showings and two months later, it still hadn't sold. We didn't even have an offer -- not even an obnoxious low-ball offer. And something in me broke. It could have been the comment that my contemporary furniture didn't belong in my '50s rambler or that the house -- a sea of highly buffed, empty surfaces -- was "cluttered" or the one that said "Mrs. Buyer" was turned off by the color of my kitchen. There were two photos of that kitchen on MLS that prominently displayed the paint color.

"And have you never seen that large aisle in Home Depot filled with swatches and cans?!" I wanted to scream. I wanted to grab buyers by the shoulders and shake them. (Note: Never, ever shake a buyer.)

We took the house off the market and I reconciled myself to single parenting until the market improved. Not knowing where my children would go to school in the fall was killing me and enough was enough.

Although we hadn't seriously considered renting out our house, we posted it on www.craigslist.org for what seemed a kingly amount of money -- just to test the waters. We had responses in hours. One was from an empty-nester couple transferred here from Atlanta, where their house sits on the market.

Meanwhile, Jason followed up on an odd lead in Duluth's Park Point neighborhood. Normally, I don't think of us affording a beach house, but a church there was losing their full-time priest and the rectory, a three-bedroom rambler with an attached garage, was coming available for rent. While Jason didn't pretend that the home was a showplace, he did say that it was sunny and probably wouldn't stir suicidal tendencies in me. The price was unbeatable -- but there was just this one catch. The church lacks running water, so for an hour or so every Sunday (and one might also guess Feasts of Holy Obligation) we must allow full-bladdered parishioners the comfort of our bathroom.

And while I was mulling this around in my head, the Georgians called; they wanted the house. So we'll be moving to the rectory in a month and it turns out I am far more comfortable test-driving our Duluth relocation knowing that my St. Anthony rambler awaits me here. Now the stress of moving can be optimistically redefined as an exciting adventure -- and our time on the real estate market only a bad dream.

Lucie Amundsen is at lucie@twowordy.com.