CHAPTER 1 Showings, Stress, and the Sudden ess, and the Sudden Disappearance of Your Sanity our Sanity Welcome to the glamorous world of home selling, where you spend 80 hours making your house look like no one actually lives in it… just so strangers can waltz through, criticize your paint choices, and never call you back. Let’s get real: when you list your home, you become a part-time maid, event planner, therapist (for your pets and children), and hostage negotiator (again, for your pets and children). You’ll hold showing after showing, hoping someone, anyone , will walk in and say, “Yes! This is the one!” Spoiler alert: most don’t. In fact, you’ll show your house to roughly 8–30 potential buyers before the right one finally shows up. That’s 24 to 40 hours just physically showing the house—and if we’re being honest, it’s more like 80–120 hours when you factor in the frantic cleaning, staging, yelling at your kids to pick up their toys, and trying to make your dog stop barking like you’ve never had visitors before. Got kids? Prepare to become a full-time Uber driver, shuttling them to and from friends' houses or parks during every showing. Got pets? Say hello to the crate, the basement, or your in-laws’ backyard. Your dog won’t know what he did wrong, but he's pretty sure it was everything. All this chaos, and for what? A bunch of people "just 2
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