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Selling a Home

Selling a Home Through a Child’s Eyes

A "child's" perspective on their home being sold
Bluematter

In February of 1987 my parents made the journey from St. Barnabas Hospital to our home in Livingston NJ. To this day my mom says it was the most nerve-wracking car ride of her life. It was the day they brought me home for the first time. They have lived in that same house for the past 27 years…AKA my entire life.

By now you have probably realized this post is not in fact written by a “child” but by a 27 year old who just had a “bomb” dropped on her. Just a few months ago, my parents told me of their plans to move. I was outraged. How could they do this? This was OUR home. The home that we spent nearly three decades in. It is filled with memories of “firsts,” backyard BBQs, holidays, family dinners, laughs, love and so much happiness. It is the home that I left as a “Jacob” and returned as a “Listanski.” (picture above from my wedding morning) This was the home that I wanted MY children (one day) to play, grow and explore in.

I won’t lie.  My stomach hurt when my parents told me.  My heart was broken.

For as long I can remember, my parents have been talking about moving but never acted on it.

High school wasn’t the right time. Those are the years where girl teenage friendships are already stressful enough. My parents gave me the incredibly generous gift of paying for college so that certainly wasn’t the right time for them. Then, after college, I returned home and happily reclaimed my childhood bedroom. So that wasn’t the right time either.

After I moved back home it only took me a year to get engaged to my college sweetheart and we moved into an apartment exactly 2 turns and 6 minutes away from my childhood home. I thought to myself, this is it, they are finally going to make the jump…but they didn’t.

Fast forward three years ahead and I purchased my first home, ironically 3 turns and 4 minutes away from my childhood home.  I guess they realized that I wasn’t going to come back home.  It was time.

But how could they do this to me? How, NOW, after all this time could they move? And then it hit me. My parents have moved into the phase of their life that real estate professionals call “empty nesters.” They don’t need a big house anymore, they are tired of taking care of a large property, they want something new and you know what…they deserve it. They deserve it more than anyone I know. They are building a beautiful townhouse that they have always deserved. For years they have put aside their dreams of moving for my own comfort and I couldn’t thank them enough for that.

Despite my heart being crushed that later this year I will have to bid my only childhood home goodbye I couldn’t be happier for them to begin this new chapter of this life together.

Have you gone through a similar experience? Any words of advice before my final farewell?

child child home children sellers week selling your home
Bluematter
Bluematter

12 comments

  12. My parents just put the house that I grew up in for 30 years on the market 2 weeks ago. My anxiety has been through the roof. I’ve lived with my boyfriend for 5 years, but I always was told “I had a home to come back to if I ever needed to”. Although I told myself I could never ‘move back home’ if it ever came down to that, I am still heartbroken, that as of tonight, the house could be sold. A bid came through that is favorable to my parents, and its just a matter of the buyers signing the papers and putting down the deposit. The thought alone frightens me. But that wouldn’t be fair to my parents, who are now seniors and can no longer keep up the property. Why dust and clean 4 bedrooms that nobody sleeps in? Why ask my parents to stay in a house just because it’s comfortable and familiar to me, and I don’t even live in it? Change is hard. Familiarity feels comfortable. If we rejected change, we would never be able to move forward. So many memories were built there, but life is meant to build memories along every path that we cross. Movement throughout life when necessary, IS necessary. Letting go is hard, but sometimes its necessary to see what lies ahead. It’s ok to be sad. But I mustn’t look at it as a loss, but as a gain. My parents well being is more important that my attachment to a home I grew up in. Memories don’t live in houses, they live in YOU and the people who also hold those same memories.

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