Selling a Home; an Emotional Roller Coaster

I recently sold a property I had owned as a vacation home. It was a tough decision to make. My husband and I had years of great memories there. We were selling it to purchase a bigger and better home and it made no sense to hold onto it. But that didn’t really make saying goodbye to it any easier.

As a real estate professional, I think we can sometimes fall into the trap of explaining the selling process to clients separate from emotion. We might find ourselves explaining it in the same way we’d explain how to operate a new TV. This is what we do for work, and we have these conversations every day with different clients. It’s understandable that perhaps the process becomes easy and mechanical for us. And while there is certainly a benefit to having your agent there to provide a neutral perspective, going through the sale of my home was a good reminder to me of how emotionally charged a real estate transaction can be and a reminder to be sensitive to that with our clients.

At Donnelly + Co., we take this process to heart. Most real estate transactions occur around a major life event; some happy, some less so. Our clients are getting married, having their first, second, or third child. They are retiring and letting go of their big suburban home, changing jobs, or spending a big bonus as a result of a promotion. But our clients are also experiencing divorce, death, or financial woes, and those situations result in real estate decisions just as much as the happy events do.

We understand this and we are sensitive to the complexities of buying or selling a home while also dealing with some kind of major life upheaval. This is why all of my agents are trained and experienced in being aware of and understanding how to navigate the myriad of issues each of our clients might be dealing with, before they even start to talk about the real estate transaction at hand.