My wife and I recently sold our home in Winnipeg
and are in the process of buying one in the Chicago
suburbs. I’ve learned a lot about home
buying and selling, and would like to share
some tips with you, in case you’re daring
enough to buy or sell a home. I use the
word “daring” because I strongly advise
against it, just as I strongly advise
against committing murder. And trust
me, at some point during your home
buying or selling process, you will
want to kill someone, most likely
your real-estate agent. At a minimum,
you’ll find yourself wondering
if it’s okay to spend the rest of your
life paying off a debt, and whether
your credit rating will be affected if it
happens to be a debt to society.
I don’t mean to scare you—I just
want you to be prepared for the bitter
feelings that might arise if the process
doesn’t go the way you hoped, such as
if you’re forced to sell your home for less
than you owe the bank. (This is known
as a short sale in real-estate terminology,
because you will be short of money to pay
the bank, the bank manager will get short with
you, and achieving your retirement goals will be
nothing short of a miracle.)
If you still feel compelled to buy or sell a home, it’s
a good idea to learn as much as you can about the process.
Let’s start with some home selling tips:
• De-clutter your home. It’s important to make
your home look spacious, so please rent a storage unit
somewhere and fill it up with everything you don’t
require for your day-to-day living needs, except perhaps
your husband. Trust me, potential home buyers
are not going to be impressed with your collection of
seashells from all over the world, even if you’ve glued
them together in the shape of Barack Obama. Remember:
home buyers want to be pleasantly surprised, not
shell-shocked.
• Update your kitchen. This is really important to
women, as I discovered when my wife and I walked
into a gleaming new kitchen and her eyes lit up—more
brightly than on our wedding day.
Too bad we were just visiting a
friend’s house.
• Don’t hang around during
home viewings. When a real-estate
agent is showing your home
to potential buyers, it’s really not a good idea
for you to be lying on the couch in the living
room, watching an episode of Wife Swap. It’s
better to disappear for an hour or two, and
by “disappear,” I don’t mean in the walkin
closet. Trust me, if there’s anything
more off-putting to a home buyer
than seeing a row of leisure suits from
the ’70s, it’s seeing a pair of eyes behind
them.
• Put away your photos and
other personal items. Home buyers
want to picture themselves living
in your home, not picture you on
a beach in Hawaii. You don’t want
them to get the wrong idea.
Wife: “That bikini seems a little
tight on her.”
Husband: “Not as tight as our finances
will be if we buy this home.”
Tight finances are certainly a good
reason to be careful when buying a
home. Here are some tips to help you:
• Always verify facts. The seller may
claim that “the roof was installed in ’06 and
the carpet was installed in ’08, but you need to
make sure it wasn’t 1906 and 1908.
• Do as much research as you can. Google the
home, Google its owner, Google the neighbor, Google
the neighbor’s dog. The latter may seem extreme,
but wait until you need to retrieve an errant ball. Pretty
soon, you’ll be calling the police to retrieve part of
your butt.
• Location is important. If a home is next to a busy
road, you can count on getting a good price. If it’s next
to an Indian grocery store, you can count on getting
good rice.
• Don’t let your agent pressure you or mislead you.
Real-estate agents can be very helpful, but they’re also
eager to see you making a purchase. If your agent sends
you a text on his iPhone that a particular house “will be
scooped up within a week,” what he’s trying to scoop
up within a week is his commission. Not all agents are
like this, of course. Some have Blackberries.
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