We sold our home during the pandemic. See our story!

Moving Day!



My wife and I are recent early retirees.  I am 48 years old while my wife is 51 years old.  We made the big decision to retire this year rather than wait another year, then another, and so on...We are adherents of FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) movement.  We had been planning for this D-Day for years.  Once our financial independence part worked out, we jumped off to our early retirement in August, 2020.

Going through this year was tough for everybody, I’m sure.  Seeing people die each and every day due to the pandemic put things in perspective.  We realized time here on Earth is too short.  We wanted to spend more time with our family and with each other.  Instead of asking ourselves ‘can we do it / should we do it’, we said what we have is enough.  I mean how much more is enough if you already have enough?

This is our story and our experience selling our home.

My wife and I sold our home during the heat of the summer (July).  We hired a real estate agent around middle of June.  She recommended fixing up few things to spruce up our home.  After countless trips to Lowe’s, then countless hours of applying elbow grease, we were finally ready to put our home on the market early July.

Right off the bat, we knew this year was no ordinary year for selling homes.  Our agent let us know some guidelines/rules for showing our home.


These were:


  • We couldn’t be inside of our home for showings.
  • Only two prospective buyers and their agent can see our home.  This meant large families had to wait their turns outside before going into the home.
  • All visitors must wear face masks and use either booties and take their shoes off before entering the home.
  • Visitors cannot touch any surfaces like door knobs, closet doors, etc., so we had to open all doors, closets, and leave all the lights on in all the rooms.
  • Once last showings had completed for the day, we had to wipe down our home just to be safe

July 9th was the day our home went on the market.  We had 26 showings by the end of the weekend!  
***We sold two homes prior to this one.  I can safely say we never had this kind of response. Because we couldn’t be inside our home, we had to stay in our car during 90 degrees plus temperature weekend.

We ate take out lunch in our car and had one too many iced coffees.  We had to improvise on where we should go for our bathroom needs.  Not many places were opened back then, but luckily a supermarket was open nearby.  Talk about relief!

By Tuesday (5 days after going on the market), we had two offers on the house and we took one of them.  We got close to our asking price.  

After agreeing to the price, the toughest part of retiring early awaited us!

Because we were planning on traveling without having a place of our own, we needed to get rid of our stuff within the next 5 weeks!  *For those of you who are wondering if we’re homeless, I guess we are.  We do have a ‘home base’ in North Carolina at our brother’s place.  This is where we get our mail, and it’s the official address for things like driver’s license, registration, and insurance.  We do spend time there, but since our retirement, I would say we’ve been doing about 80% on the road and 20% at our home base.

There were things we had to consider:

  • Sell all our furniture: two bedrooms (bed, mattress, cabinet, head board), one study (two tables/chairs), living room (couch, tv, home theater system, dining table/chairs), and a walk out basement (tv, couch, futon, DVD player)
  • Sell or donate books, dvd/cd, paintings, tools, clothes, kitchen utensils/small appliances, garage stuff, and on and on and on!!!
  • Determine which documents to take vs shredding 
There are probably others I left out, so I apologize in advance!

Long story short, after a weekend garage sale, 5 trips to the donation center, and recycling / throwing out the rest, we managed to whittle down our absolute necessities to about 10% of what we initially had.

Here’s what we kept:

  • Underwear, socks, evening wear, few coats, several long sleeve items, several short sleeve items, shorts, few long pants, and shoes/sneakers
  • Toiletries we needed immediately (toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, cologne, floss, etc.)
  • Our dog stuff (food, his favorite toy, bed, etc.)
  • Two pairs of utensils (spoons, forks, plates, etc.) and other kitchen utensils (knife, scissor, etc.)
  • Four pillow cases and pillows (some sheets and blankets as well)
  • Our iPads
  • Documents we needed
Note: My father came by twice to bring our stuff back to his place in that 5 week span.  Most of our stuff is still with my father.  Our plan going forth is to reduce our stuff even more...

There were some hiccups (our central air was 20 years old so buyers had concerns) after agreeing to the offer, but in the end, everything worked out.  Note: we ended up giving the buyers two years of home warranty...

***Observation:  Some of my neighbors got OVER asking price.  This seemed to be the norm, rather than the exception.

Our closing date was August 24th.  That morning, we packed whatever was left over after my father’s two visits.  We left around 8:45 am for our 9:30 am closing.  Due to the pandemic, the closing agent came out to meet us outside to sign the documents.  It took about 30 minutes to get that done.

We then headed for North Carolina.  In retrospect, I can safely say without any hesitation that that was the craziest 5 weeks I ever had to go through.  I don’t think I ever want to do all of that ever again!

Hope you enjoyed this story!  Thank you for reading.

Jake
Wandering Money Pig


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Please check out our YouTube channel ‘Wandering Money Pig’ showcasing our travels and our Pomeranian dog! https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3kl9f4W9sfNG5h1l-x6nHw


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