Needle in a Haystack

We put our place on the market on February 1st.

It’s June 27th. We are still searching for a buyer for our home.

I honestly NEVER thought that it would be this hard. When our realtor filled out the contract agreement and put 8/1/11 as the expiration date for our listing, we laughed. We thought there was no way we would come even close to hitting that expiration date. We thought we’d sell in a couple of months, tops.

Well, here we are, just a little more than 30 days away from that expiration, and we haven’t had a single showing in five weeks. We’ve had a few open houses and some traffic through, but we’ve had a lack of serious buyers. This is frustrating in any selling situation, but it’s brutal for us, since you know, we’re closing on our new house in August.

We really, really, really do not want to become landlords by renting this place out. Plus, at this point, things are so completely the opposite of how we thought they were going to go that we are nervous that we’d even be able to find a suitable tenant!

So, we sit here, shaking in our boots every single day. Just wishing, hoping, praying, WILLING a buyer to come along. It would be such a huge relief to find one. An enormous weight off our shoulders if we could come across that needle in the haystack.

I keep thinking that surely at some point, things will HAVE to fall into place, right? The power of positive thinking. Have faith. Things work out the way they should. Isn’t that what everyone always says?

To try to help things along, we’ve been doing everything in our power to encourage a sale. We’ve lowered the price (twice). And now, this past weekend, we moved a bunch of stuff out of the house. We took pictures off the walls. We cleared things out of closets and rooms to make them feel less cramped–especially since we are literally busting at the seams in this place. (Hey, that’s why we’re moving!)

After we did all that, we went around and took new pictures. We were never happy with the ones that our realtor took on that cold winter’s day back in February, with her little point-and-shoot camera. So, we went around and “staged” each room the best we could and took nice shots with our DSLR. They’ve been updated in the system, and I am crossing my fingers and praying that they are enough to convince someone to schedule an appointment to see this place. And that the visit is enough to make them want to buy it.

Now we continue to wait. As we have waited for nearly five months now.

Every day, hoping we will get that call. It only takes one.

It only takes one.