After much debate, we’ve made the tough decision to list our current home for sale. I am a little sad: this was the first house that Brendan and I bought together, the house where I got dressed for our wedding and the place where 75% of the BREL real estate magic happens. We know our current neighbourhood (Little Portugal/Brockton Village) is HOT and only getting HOTTER, and it hurts to know that the next owner will likely be the one to benefit from the gentrification. But I digress. Here’s what I learned this week: 
Lesson #1: Getting your house ready for sale is HARD work.
We’ve been through this process countless times on the realtor-side, but actually going through all your crap and packing it away takes an incredible amount of time and energy. It’s easy to get carried away down memory lane and it’s shocking to see how much stuff can accumulate in your basement. (Also learned this week: Brendan has hoarding tendencies and has kept both his creative writing from the second grade and 2 bottles of Liquid Paper). We decided to store our unneeded items in a POD: a big container that gets delivered to your house for a few days, carted away for storage and then re-delivered to your new home.
Lesson #2: Hearing the truth about your house can be painful, but hiring a trusted stager is worth the investment.
It’s never fun having an outsider look at your stuff and telling you that it “might be better to store this piece”, but we trust our stager and know the importance of making a home appeal to the most possible buyers. We forgot to take the ‘before’ pictures, so our ‘after’ pictures (coming next week) will have to do.
Lesson #3: The BREL Home Prep and Staging Team can transform a house like no one else.
Over the next week, our home will be filled with contractors, painters, floor installers, gardeners, cleaners, stagers, handymen, junk removers, storage people, movers, a plumber, a home inspector, photographer and videographer. Their commitment and reliability to making things happen on my admittedly ridiculous short timelines is one of the reasons we consider our group of home pros extended members of the BREL team. We’ve watched them transform our clients’ houses many times, but it’s fascinating to watch it from the Seller’s side.
Lesson #4: I can’t sell my own house.
As tempting as it is to “save the commission”, I know I can’t be impartial in the selling of my own home, so we’re taking our own advice and hiring a kick-ass real estate agent. Of course we didn’t have to look too far….Mike Lind, one of the agents on the BREL team, will be doing the heavy-lifting for us and making sure we don’t do anything stupid.
Stay tuned for more updates!
