Thursday, September 25, 2008

I'll even throw in the bath salts...

It’s been a very busy week since our return from Hawaii. I mean, of COURSE the Chicago offer we’d been waiting on for two months would show up in the middle of vacation – they couldn’t have figured this all out and sent it to us at a more opportune time (like TWO MONTHS ago…). So there was no time to lazily readjust to the five hour time difference and leisurely catch up on laundry – no, we had to immediately run out to the mall to buy Rick a decent carry-on bag and some proper new-job clothing, which I then had to wash and iron for his Tuesday morning trip up to Chicago. Then I had to unpack and catch up on vacation laundry, and start cleaning the house so when it goes on the market it’ll look halfway decent…

Today someone came to take pictures for the listing, so I had to have everything looking nice and clutter-free. Realtors are very adamant about making sure your house is “clutter-free.” So in addition to cleaning the entire house, I’ve also been packing up boxes of knickknacks and books and things I don’t anticipate needing for the next few months…

We had a “staging” specialist visit the house (weeks ago, when we first thought the job offer was imminent) at the advice of our realtor – supposedly, houses that are “staged” sell more readily than houses that are left at the random whims of their owners. If you pay enough money, a staging specialist will fill your house with furniture, accessories, flower arrangements, copies of “War and Peace,” fake diplomas, pictures of that time you traveled to Africa with the Peace Corps, etc, etc. The idea is to make your house seem more impressive and “comfortable” – people are supposed to get “emotionally attached” to your house when they walk in, resulting in a more positive impression. And apparently empty rooms are looked down upon – we have nothing in our dining room right now (we weren’t even planning to use it as a dining room… more as a library or study…), and the stager gave us a big spiel about how people might have conniption fits when they walk into the house and see an empty room. “Oh no! An empty room! Why don’t they have furniture? Why are they leaving this house so fast?? Is it built over an ancient Indian burial ground like in Poltergeist???” – This is the sort of home-buying panic the stager tried to convince us would result from an empty room…

The problem is, all that “emotional connection” with potential buyers can end up costing a lot of money. The stager told us we could “only” spend two or three thousand dollars if we didn’t want to go overboard – that would at least pay for a table and chairs for the dining room and some wall art. But here’s the thing – Rick and I have looked at a LOT of houses. In the last ten years we’ve moved three times… and we’ve been looking at places in Chicago for at least a year, because we kept thinking we’d be moving. And in all that time that I’ve gone out house-hunting, not ONCE have I walked into a house, seen an empty room, and felt complete panic over the reason for such a lack of furniture. Heck, the house we bought in New Jersey wasn’t even FINISHED when we bought it. Forget about flower arrangements and wall art – it didn’t even have kitchen cabinets when we made our decision. Who CARES why someone has an empty room in the house? I’m buying the HOUSE – not the furniture and accessories.

So instead of giving the staging specialist thousands of dollars, I went to Target and spent considerably less on a few small items. Some throw pillows for the bed, a couple shower curtains so the extra bathrooms look “finished” (“argh! An empty, perfectly clean bathroom! HOW can I possibly buy this house??”), some fake flowers… but in general, I’m just making sure the house is clean and bright and, well, a LIVABLE SPACE – because that’s what I’m trying to sell.

So hopefully the empty dining room won’t be a huge deal-breaker. Maybe I should make it clear that whoever buys this house also gets two free shower curtains and some fake flower arrangements… (free shower curtains? Sold!) :)

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