What are good reasons not to sell?

Seems like the balance is in favor of not selling, doesn’t it? Not so fast buckaroo.

Sure, if you are wealthy enough to keep the house and full-time, you might want to. Though not a guarantee (as folks have seen recently), real estate tends to be a very good asset to hold onto.

But there are lots of full-timers on the road that CAN afford to keep a house and don’t. Why not? Because the freedom of the full-timing lifestyle is what they love and having a house hinders that freedom. In this lifestyle, enough money to get by is important, but the desire to keep making more fades. It’s about simplifying life.

Things To Consider When Selling

Here are some considerations when selling your house:

Getting Rid of Your Stuff

Getting rid of your stuff can be more of a problem than selling the house. Most likely you will do all of the following:

Of course, consider self storage for furniture and other items that you don’t need on the road or just can’t part with. We know many full-timers that maintain a storage unit for several different reasons.

A lot depends on how much time you have and how anxious you are to get on the road. It’s also a very, very emotional process. Be prepared. Going through the stuff can be worse than selling the house itself.

You might want to take a look at our discussion of the Emotional Aspects of The Transition To Full-timing. That page addresses some of the emotions you may experience and let’s you know they are normal.

Our Selling Process

Once we made our decision to full-time and sell our house, we waited to see how things progressed. We figured we would have at least six months as we were giving six months notice at work.

We decided to sell because we were adamant about going on the road without debt. Plus, it was not the type of house that was easily rented. So while we considered the renting option as a means of keeping the house just in case we didn’t like full-timing and because it was appreciating quickly, we gave up that idea fast.

Again, complete freedom is what we were after. We had enough equity to buy a fifth wheel and a truck with the proceeds after paying off the mortgage. So that became the plan.

We put a For Sale By Owner sign in the yard in January knowing we needed a sale and closing by the end of July. Winter in Louisville, KY is not the time to be selling, but we had several lookers early.

Since we bought it furnished less than two years prior, we wanted to sell it furnished, and we knew we would have capital gains issues if we sold it too soon. Ideally, we would sell it furnished and close in the middle of July after the two year capital gain period had passed. We also had agreed that we would list with a realtor if it hadn’t sold by the end of April.

In a twist of fate, we learned that a realtor friend of ours was showing some clients homes in our neighborhood. We made a call to him and set up an appointment for them to come look at ours — they were not opposed to buying furnished.

One thing led to another, and I ended up calling the realtor and putting an offer on the table that made buying it furnished attractive to the buyer. We also offered to take a lower price for the real estate to help keep the buyers’ property taxes down and give us some capital gains relief in exchange for a little higher, separate price on the furnishings. I also offered the realtor a higher fee than we discussed if the buyer accepted our proposal. They did.

Now the point is that we were willing to give up some money on the front end in order to make the transaction go our way. Too many people make the mistake of trying to get just the right price and hold on too long continuing to pay a mortgage.

Once we had the contract in hand and signed, we had to start thinking about our non-furniture possessions. We had thought we were going to have to auction everything, but fortunately we sold the house furnished.

Then the buyers came back and requested that they be able to move in a month earlier than contracted. That added pressure, but we agreed.

We started putting our stuff in piles: Donate to Goodwill, throw away, yard sale, storage, and take. Fortunately, we were taking delivery of our fifth wheel just before closing, so we were able to bring it home and load it up. We had to eliminate stuff from the take it with us pile. Also, you have to be very conscious of the weight you load into the RV, so consider weight when deciding on items to take — if it’s heavy and does not serve an important function, leave it.

When all was said and done we made a few trips to Goodwill, sold items to friends, gave items away, had three yard sales, and ended up storing a few precious items and old tax records with a family member. There is very little wall space in an RV, but we did manage to bring along two pieces of artwork to hang on the wall after agonizing about leaving them behind.

We had to move into the RV three months before our jobs ended. But that turned out to be a blessing in disguise as we got to know the features and ins and outs of our rig before going on the road.

We were very fortunate in our sale, but we did some fancy footwork to make it happen. Had we not been aggressive as sellers, we may still be sitting in Louisville.

So, the lessons are:

We Can Help!

If you need help with the sale of your house, to bounce some questions off someone, or someone just to talk to that has gone through the process, feel free to contact us.

You do not have to go through it alone. )