During the last few years, Chicago home sellers enjoyed a frenzied market where properties sold quickly and easily — sometimes in a matter of hours. Yet 2001 has been somewhat of a different story.
“The market is still good and people are still buying, but they’re taking more time,” observes Ro Lebedow, an agent with Prudential Preferred Properties in the Lincoln Park neighborhood. “It’s a more normal pace.”
For sellers, that means a reality check. Instead of having multiple buyers fight over your home on the first day it’s listed, experts now forecast: longer market times, a bigger gap between the listing and selling price — and more angst.
“Sellers don’t want to believe it,” says Ken Snedegar, a real estate agent at Erdenberg Otten Associates. “It takes a while for people to realize the market has changed and the party’s over.”
It’s a rude awakening. For the last few years, the problem hasn’t been selling, but buying. After watching friends and neighbors sell in a heartbeat, many Chicago homeowners have been conditioned to purchase another property before putting theirs on the market — otherwise, they have no where to go. But now that “buy first” strategy can backfire.
When Joan Ulrich and her husband decided to sell their Lincoln Park rowhouse early this year, they shopped first and bought a house in north suburban Wilmette without any contract contingency that provided for the sale of their rowhouse first. Then the stock market plunged. “Even so, we thought it would sell in a week or two,” says Ulrich. But a month went by without any nibbles.
“We went from being excited and optimistic to feeling anxious and depressed,” Ulrich says, recalling the number of times that she would check phone messages throughout the day to see if her real estate agent had called with good news. A bridge loan enabled the couple to close on their new home, but “it was unsettling to think how long we might have to carry both houses.” So the Ulrichs dropped their asking price by $50,000. Yet that reduction stirred up some new anxiety, for the question became not merely a matter of when would the house sell, but for how much? “Because we were already committed at the other end, we were now getting nervous about what we would get out of the rowhouse,” says Ulrich. She had already earmarked perceived profits for various projects in the new house, which were now in jeopardy. The lower their selling price, the more restricted they would be.
“Ultimately, it was fine,” says Ulrich. Two weeks after cutting the price, they got an offer.
Yet Ulrich has no desire to relive the six weeks of limbo. “My husband and I spent countless hours evaluating all the aspects of the move [from physical to financial] to the point of losing sleep,” says Ulrich. “It also spills over into your professional life as you try to field calls from the mortgage company, your attorney and both agents. It’s a huge distraction.”
Whether the market is good or bad, selling is never stress-free because there are so many unanswered questions. If you sell first, for example, what if the market dries up before you find what you’re looking for? If you buy first, you may be saddled with two mortgages for an indefinite period, which takes the joy out of moving to better digs.
Psychologists say it’s this uncertainty that generates so much anxiety. “You can be in a wonderful neighborhood, mortgage rates can be low, you can price your house right — and you still don’t know when it will sell,” points out Terrence Koller, an Evanston psychologist.
The nail biting doesn’t necessarily end with the appearance of a prospective buyer. Suppose someone offers you 10 percent under your asking price. You believe, however, that the home should go for no less than 5 percent below the list price. “Should you trust your guess and turn down the offer?” asks Koller. “What if everyone who’s out there looking has already seen your home and you’re turning down the only offer you’re going to receive?”
After you sign a contract, you still can’t relax. The inspection process is a wild card that often brings unexpected problems.
“For many sellers, their home is their castle, something they’ve put a lot of personal sweat into,” says William Harrison, a real estate attorney in north suburban Niles. Then when someone comes along and finds fault with your handiwork, a minor repair can turn into a bone of contention. Certainly, larger issues can also emerge during inspections. Sellers, however, usually anticipate those, explains Harrison. It’s the $100 and $200 repairs that can cause blood pressure to rise.
Surprises can even happen at closing. When Anne Benoist sold her Lincoln Park condo two years ago, the buyer walked out of the closing. The problem? Part of the transaction included a leased parking space, and the buyer didn’t like where the garage owner had signed on the document.
At the time her buyer walked, Benoist was sitting at another title company, waiting to close on her new home. Because she needed the equity out of the condo sale, that transaction also got put on hold. “It was a nightmare,” says Benoist. “That night we went over to a friend’s house for dinner, and I ended up crying the whole night. We were able to close a week later, but it was a very stressful time.”
The selling process is “a continuum of stress” that begins when you decide to sell and doesn’t end until after you’ve settled into a new home, says psychologist Koller. And unfortunately, there’s no real way to speed up the cycle. “You can make the decision to sell your house, but you’re limited to how fast you can move ahead with the decision,” he adds.
That lack of control is particularly frustrating for today’s sellers. “We belong to a society where we expect things to happen quickly,” points out Jamie Roth of Highland Park, who is trying to sell a house in California.
Yet real estate is not a totally liquid asset. “It’s not like trading stocks over the Internet,” says Roth. “Certainly, better agents know how to target buyers, but they can’t pull them out of the woodwork.” Conversely, as a buyer, “you’re in the driver’s seat. You can control what you want to reject.”
Besides timing, there are plenty of other control issues to ruffle sellers’ psyches:
– Economic factors: Face it, you’re not Alan Greenspan; you can’t tweak interest rates.
– Weather: Suppose there’s a major snowstorm on the day of your open house.
– Neighbors: What if the neighbors are noisy?
– The neighborhood: What if the city decides this is the time to rip up your street for that major sewer repair?
“You can get a house in total order, but you can’t control what’s going on around it,” points out Scott Haas, chief psychologist at Arbour-HRI Hospital, a teaching facility affiliated with Boston University.
Yet there’s even a point as to how much you can control the inside. When his own house was up for sale, Haas recalls returning after showings and discovering items out of place: “It was nothing major — the TV controls, some books — however, you realized that someone had been through your things.”
That realization can be disconcerting, because home is where you try to create a safe place for your family — and having strangers there is intrusive. Yet whether you like it or not, selling a home forces you to be on display, says Haas. “It’s basically a blind-date situation. You’re looking for anyone to ask you to dance. Suddenly strangers are in your bathroom and bedroom — and typically you’re not there to watch over.”
Besides privacy issues, our emotional attachment to home plays out in other ways. For example, not only do sellers want a buyer to show up, they really want a buyer whom they like.
“A home is really a reflection of you. It’s the physical embodiment of yourself. You’re not just selling a building, you’re selling memories, a part of yourself,” explains Haas. “If you don’t like the person who’s buying your home, it can disrupt your sense of well-being.”
And, if no one wants to buy it, it’s hard not to feel personally rejected.
Jeanne Poorman of Wilmette recalls trying to sell her home in Texas during the late 1980s, a particularly rough time for real estate. “I wanted to grab people off the street and march them up to the house,” says Poorman.
When buyers did show up, they often breezed through the house in 5 minutes, which irritated Poorman. “I would think, `Why can’t these people see how great this house is?’ “
As a property lingers longer on the market, that annoyance begins to turn into panic. “You start to ask yourself if there is something seriously wrong with the house that you don’t see,” recalls Poorman. “You worry that it’s going to become one of those houses that people whisper about.”
After two years on the market, a buyer finally emerged. “But we were getting desperate,” says Poorman, noting that her mother-in-law even came over and buried a statue of St. Joseph upside down in the front yard.
Yet selling in good times can be equally stressful, albeit for different reasons.
Early in 2000, Poorman and her husband decided to sell their first home in Wilmette and move across town to a bigger house. This time a slow market wasn’t the problem (it sold in 10 days); it was the grueling process of getting ready to show.
After 10 years and raising four children in the house, they had reached “a point of critical mass,” says Poorman. “I was completely overwhelmed and didn’t know where to begin. I would start to pack, and then sit down again.”
Friends rallied to her aid, but that didn’t speed things up by much. A self-admitted pack rat, Poorman found it difficult to part with almost anything. “I had every toy my children ever played with, every drawing . . . I almost came to blows with a friend over one of my children’s Easter bunny baskets,” she recalls. “I got it out of the trash five times. It became quite comical.”
The pressure gets worse when the for-sale sign goes up. “You wake up feeling mad and frenzied every day,” says Poorman. “You feel like you have to leap up every morning and make the beds right away. You run through the house, swooping up every cup or toy your child puts down . . . God forbid that your house should look like someone lived there.”
That “de-personalizing” process can be another sore spot for sellers.
The first time a real estate agent advised Poorman to take down her family pictures, she protested, “But this is the room that looks the best in the whole house, it’s the only one that’s completely finished.” The agent was right, admits Poorman, but turning her house into a display model was a turnoff. “As a seller,” she says, “you feel like you’re showing your home to people, but the Realtor wants you to show your house. That’s hard because they’re wrapped up in one another.”
“The house becomes entwined with the milestones of your family’s life,” she explains. “You remember the day you brought your children home from the hospital . . . you see them on the swing and remember the time they couldn’t even reach it. Your house becomes this benchmark for your family’s progress.”
