My last post captured the feeling of defeat. It documented the climatic letdown when effort converges and we don’t get what we want.
It was making a weighty decision and being ghosted rather than gifted.
I’m talking about selling our house—or, more accurately, not selling our house in what realtors refer to as “a challenging market.”
Before you eye-roll and *rightfully* roll, please know that the house wasn’t a gift from a dead relative. Also, I’m not some rich kid who selected a handsome home for its southern-facing views and closet space.
This house represents eight years of bootstrapped labour and likely asbestos poisoning.
During our time fixing it up, we peed into a bucket while our only bathroom was out of commission.
We slept in the kitchen while a man named “Gent” scrapped off the popcorn ceiling.
We had a mouse infestation.
A raccoon infestation.
A horrible neighbour infestation.
One night, an adjoining neighbour chiseled INTO OUR BEDROOM screaming, “Shhh satan! I’ll burn the house down!” (fear not, I’ve got the audio).
And yes, we also “rock, paper, scissored” for who’d have to remove the asbestos venting—may the oldest man win!
When we bought the house in 2017, we had no idea what we were doing.
Before getting it, we toured every dilapidated house in the city.
To fall within our frail purchasing power, we only saw houses that met strict criteria: optically offensive, showed signs of infestation (see above ^), and had a hospital gurney in the living room.
After a dozen fruitless offer nights, we landed our row house on Delaware Avenue.
We got the place during a market frenzy and bought it virtually sight unseen. The house was settled on an angle, had a trailer-sized oven in the kitchen, and approximately 17 different flooring types throughout.
Note: If we can all agree that 80’s parquet is the pits, our basement floor was adorned with *stickers* of parquet—a peel n’ stick imitation of the flooring type most likely to support a stained futon and gerbil cage.
Throughout the years, we transformed the house from lipstickless to lipstick on a pig and finally into a fully realized Miss Piggy.
We pulled off aesthetic wins and eventually did the stuff that costs the most that no woman cares about (no vagina has ever tingled over 200 amp service).
While the house would always have limitations, it had officially arrived.
Rather than kick back and smile smugly at our finished product, we felt it was time to keep moving. While we weren’t over the home that we’d carved out of plaster and vinyl stickers, we craved the space that letting go promises.
And truthfully, at the risk of another eye roll, selling our Toronto house was not the first choice.
Our rental cottage in PEI, which we bought with a downpayment the size of a 2014 Corolla, was.
The cottage is a cliffside charmer with ocean views only rivalled by its ferocious mosquitoes. Like the island itself, our place is concurrently beautiful and wicked. As spectacular as the cottage is on idyllic days, it can be equally unrelenting with windy howls that catapult rocks a hundred feet in the air.
The island never gives anything away for free.
While we never wanted to sell the cottage, Hurricane Fiona gave us pause. The storm nearly levelled our place. It had a blown-off roof, a disintegrated shed, and a deck that was frisbeed into a neighbouring field.
Since the hurricane, we’ve spent the last two years rebuilding. Nearly every vacation day and summer evening has been spent between Home Depot Charlottetown and the job site. We worked in dozens of two-week sprints, finishing all we could, then flying back to Toronto stiff and paint-covered.
Note: When given the choice to take an insurance payout or have the insurance contractors rebuild for you, go with the option that lets you float in a pool.
For us, the fear of another hurricane wasn’t the deciding factor in us selling the cottage. Us wanting time back was. Between the two properties, we’d sunk several compounded years of manual labored effort.
I, someone who owns feather-trimmed pyjamas, has hauled a kitchen across the country in a pervert’s panel van.
I’ve sanded. Patched. Painted. Junked. And tiled.
I’m on a name-to-name basis with more than one hardware store manager.
I can eyeball measurements with concerning accuracy.
I have ideas that the mens don’t entirely scoff at.
I got good at throwing a football.
And I’m aware of this opportunity cost. What I could’ve done with that energy spent, I can’t know—maybe nothing, maybe something. But I do know that we felt overburdened in our knock-off HGTV alternate universe.
During what should be our most unconstrained adult years, we’ve become people with a storage unit.
Listing PEI was an invitation for change.
Note: PEI is a market where everything is perpetually for sale. It’s a place where a house can catfish because the real estate photos were taken 7 years ago and Grandpappy’s pipe has since turned the walls brown.
Without surprise, our cottage’s “for sale” sign proved to be mostly ornamental. So, this fall, we pulled it off the market and moved on to plan b: sell Toronto.
We did a month-long blitz to get our house photo-ready. We got new windows and marble countertops and painted the house from top to bottom, inside and out. We patched concrete, built a deck, and even skim-coated the basement ceiling with new pot lights. We also cleared out the house to make way for the staging.
Like rebuilding PEI, we worked twelve-hour days. We called these weeks “defeating the final mob boss”, where despite growing accustomed to hideous tasks, this had to be the climax. It was the last, high-stakes stretch before ending the game.
And once the house was live, our efforts seemed to be paying off.
We listed low to garner attention, and as a result, had packed open houses and inflating confidence. My 97-year-old Grandma even declared that we shan’t accept a penny less than “3 million dollars”—she was not talking in pesos.
On offer night, we opened a 2017 vintage (the year we got the place), lit a green prosperity candle (you can never be over-prepared), and anxiously waited to collect our blessing.
We were happy to receive five offers, however, as each one was presented, it was clear that they were all well below our predicted sell mark.
We attempted to work with the “best” offer, which was from a slight, fedora-wearing man who pulled unsolicited trivia cards at our open house. When we went back to negotiate, he was unreachable because he was—I shit you not—at trivia night.
Our best offer was from Batman’s Riddler, and even he couldn’t be bothered to stop riddlin’ for five minutes to make real-life happen.
I felt like we’d been punk’d.
With our defeat clear, I wanted to cry. However, years of repressed emotions and a default reaction of anger, wouldn’t allow for it. I felt exposed, unlucky, and unexpectedly sad for the house that had tried so hard for us. We’d all been let down.
Rather than the easy win enjoyed by slumlords during high times, we’d cut no corners, and it didn’t matter. Our plan had fallen flat.
Regardless, we knew that the show must go on. And so we relisted the next day at our “real” price.
Miss Piggy would have to continue her baton-twirling number for the people.
And like most everything, her second wind wasn’t as dazzling as her first.
There were fewer showings and we skimped on the good donuts at the open house. We followed up on leads, held out for repeat visitors, and whittled the pipeline down to a few paperclips and stray TicTacs.
“But on the seventh day, God ended His work which He had done…Blah, blah, blah…Then God blessed,”—Genesis 2:2.
A week later, we received a firm offer. It was below our list price but far better than anything we’d received on offer night.
We went back and forth and arrived at the best and final when their agent pretended to be offended.
Simultaneously, on the other side of the country tides were also turning.
After months of radio silence, there was a crackle across the AM dial.
Despite the cottage being off-market and closed for winter, our senile realtor called to report that we had an offer. At first, we thought she’d messed up our names (again) and was referring to another property (again). However, our inbox would suggest it was, in fact, material.
Toronto and PEI sold on the same day—seventeen minutes apart.
Just like that, we went from nothing to everything. And everything to nothing
Doors have officially closed and now the keys belong to someone else. We have fewer places to hide.
Looks like I am the next project.