House for Sale: Comes With Deep Emotional Damage

Swipe Right For Heartbreak (Messed-Up But Managing #1)

At some point in your life, you’ll make the mistake of selling your house. People will tell you it’s exciting. They will pitch the idea of a fresh start. Realtors will convince you: “It’s a hot market right now.” Lies. Lies. Most of it’s lies. What no one tells you is that selling your house is one of the most vulnerable things you can do—like speed dating, except instead of getting rejected based on your face, people reject you based on the way you maintain shrubbery.

First, you list the house. Then you post pictures that make it look just a little better than reality—like a dating app, where your house suddenly looks tidy, has good lighting and filters, and a strategically cropped-out neighbor who hasn’t cut his grass since Reagan was in office. Then, you wait. You sit there, open, like a profile, waiting to be liked, hearted, commented on, swiped on. Then the judgment starts. At least on a date, you get a meal out of it. Selling your home has no such perk. There’s no steak or burger and fries. The best scenario anyway? They come to your place. These strangers, these house-speed-daters—they come into your home and, like a motivated mother-in-law, immediately start picking apart everything.

“Oh, the kitchen is kind of small. You know what that means!” (Swipe.)

“I don’t know if I like the layout. Is this floorplan from the 30s?” (Swipe.)

“I love it, but I just wish the bathroom was two inches wider.” (Swipe so hard the screen breaks.)

At first, you tell yourself it’s not personal. They’re just looking for the right fit, just like you did once. It’s not you; it’s them. In time, however, the rejections start to feel different. More targeted. More personal.

“I don’t like the floors.” (Ah, yes. The floors. The floors that I have walked on. The floors that have supported my literal existence for years. The floors that have never once failed me in doing their one job of being floors. These people do not respect the floors. What’s wrong with the floors?!)

“The kitchen isn’t modern enough.” (Modern enough for who? Is Biden going to take a hand-held, guided tour?)

“The backyard isn’t big enough for our dog.” (Your dog? Your dog?! Your fifteen-pound dog needs more backyard space?! Let me guess: your furry friend has been dreaming of sprawling pastures and acreage, but tragically, this yard does not meet his grand ambitions. Right?! Should we have DNLR zone this as a protected area? Would a state park satisfy?)

And then, when you finally get an offer, you think you’ll have a moment to catch your breath. Nope. It gets worse. Because now they want changes. It’s not enough that they’re agreeing to buy your house. No, no, no. It’s not enough that you already did updates. It’s not enough that you left your house multiple times at the most random hours of the day—1:15pm-2pm Wednesday; 8:45pm-9:30pm Thurday; 6am-6:45am Saturday—so they could come play detective. That’s not enough. They need you to be better. They want you to fix other things, more things. They want you to make updates to things like locks and hairline cracks in the sidewalks and gutters. They want you to repaint things in a color that “feels more neutral.” (Ah yes, gray. The “in” color; the color of compromise. The universal shade of people who do not know what they want so there’s at least 50 of them—but they do know that they fear commitment.)

This is not a sale. This is a makeover show where you do all the work and someone else gets the prize. Imagine going on a first date and, halfway through dinner, the person across from you says, “I really like you, but I’d like you to have a different nose and a better personality before I commit. I really need to see some updates, some refreshing, a decent makeover before I can consider taking this any farther.” That is what house-selling negotiations feel like.

And then, inspection day comes. This is the part where a trained expert—someone who has never lived in this house, loved this house, or even cared if this house had feelings (even though you know for sure it does!)—spends three hours telling you why your home is broken, flawed, and maybe should never have existed at all.

“Did you know your water heater is slightly older than it should be?” (Cool, I guess I’ll just invent time travel and go back to 2016 and regret buying it.) “The insulation isn’t up to today’s energy standards.” (Neither am I, Steve; so, maybe you should just go already.) “There’s a crack in the side retaining wall.” (Now there’s one in my heart, too, buddy.)

By the end of it, you are no longer a person—you are a punching bag for a man with a clipboard and an unsettling enthusiasm for moisture levels. And then, finally—finally—you get to closing day. The house is sold. It’s done. You are free. Except…you’re not.

Because you will drive past that house a year later and see what they’ve done to it. And in that moment, you will know rage. Pure rage. Unadulterated rage. Because after all that criticism, after all that whining, after all that rejection and nitpicking and demanding repairs—they painted it green.

The kitchen they said was too small? (Oh, no, they haven’t remodeled it. Too much work for them.) The floors they “couldn’t live with”? (Still there. Still supporting them.) The yard their high-maintenance dog allegedly could not function in? (Solution: Get a second dog.) And that’s when you realize: it was never about the house. Nothing was wrong with the house. It was them; they were the problem. If only I could leave them a review, too!