I met *Leanne in 2021 when she hired me to represent her at an auction.
I remember it well, as I remember most of my auctions. Many are intense. All are memorable, and some are just downright cutthroat. Like the one where the underbidders left mid-auction as the hammer was falling down in my favour.
Sweet sweet victory.
Like Mr Burns in the Simpsons (for those millennial readers).
I love a win, and on this evening in May 2021, I took out the final bidder with a one thousand dollar bid to secure the property and end the bidding war for good.
That night, Leanne was signing off on the contract and moving full speed into plans to build her dream home.
4 years later, our paths crossed again, and before I knew it, deja voo had kicked in and I was standing on the same lot of land. Only this time, we were perched high in Leanne’s beautifully air conditioned living room, surrounded by luxury finishings, a fireplace and staring out to the view the drone had captured four years earlier.
She was selling.
Life had sent Leanne and her family in a new direction and it was time to do the real estate thing again. But this time around it was a tad more complex.
Sell the dream, to buy another dream.
The trouble is, we don’t yet know what that other dream looks like.
And this is where the mind boggles.
If you’ve ever had to sell a home, and then quickly buy, you’ll understand the stress that one carries during this uncertain time.
This isn’t just about money, or having to deal with real estate agents, brokers and open homes. I’m talking a full blown uprooting of one’s entire life and stepping into the unknown… as well as the money, broker and agent parts.
Add in the weekends spent prepping your current home for house hunters to tell you the floorplan is all wrong, or the bathroom tiles could have been a shade lighter.
Let’s be honest. Buyers suck sometimes.
And then there’s the offers. Or lack of.
Or the offers that are made, only to be withdrawn before pen can hit paper because hubby found another house. (Aren’t the women supposed to be in charge of the house selection process?!)
Weeks roll on and then the pressure cooker hits a higher thermostat — because you just found it. The NEW dream home.
Whilst the focus has initially centred around the sale, it has now taken a complete 180 and shifted to the buy. And that’s nothing short of destabilising.
Finding the perfect new home before you’ve sold your existing home is like meeting your future husband before you’ve dumped the current squeeze. Mr Now still ticks all the boxes, but you know there’s no future with him.
So you need him gone. Like, yesterday.
Mr Right is there and waiting. But if you hesitate, he might be snapped up.
The order is all wrong.
Sell must come before Buy. Must it?
Not always, but its cleaner that way.
This conundrum often signifies the emotional breaking point for clients I work with under these conditions, and rightly so.
In this instance, I’m acting as both a seller’s advocate and buyer’s advocate for Leanne, so I’m a front seat passenger to both sides of the exchange. The sell and the buy. All the while reminding her that those anxious feelings keeping her up at night are completely normal and justified.
Thankfully, my experience as both a seller’s agent and a buyer’s agent is kicking in to strategically guide the game and help make sense of the emotional rollercoaster that is buying and selling real estate. (In that order.)
Property is emotional. We attach. And then we have to find a way to detach, throw a lot of money around in the process, and hope the move doesn’t break us.
That’s no easy feat.
But as I remind many of my clients, this transition from old home to new home is merely a right of passage to the next chapter. A storm in a teacup moment.
The life you’re consciously building is coming to fruition and that’s exciting.
Soon, this will all become a memory in time that you will look back on and say, wow, I’m so glad we had Wendy to guide us through that sh*t show!