Meet Sofia, a pint-sized 13-year-old whose personality is bigger than life! I invited her to share her thoughts about her family's recent home selling/buying experience. Buckle up. She's a hoot!
"When my family first started thinking about moving, I wasn’t very happy. I didn’t want to leave my friends and my theatre company behind, and I especially didn’t want to keep my room clean for staging. It was a little scary not knowing when our house was going to sell, I didn’t like the apartment where we were living in the meantime, and I really didn’t like spending my weekends driving back to our old house to pack.
When the house finally sold, I was so relieved. Then the fun part started. We looked at so many houses that were for sale, trying to find one that would be right for us. We found many houses that we liked, but there was always something about them that prevented us from getting that house."
Note from Doug: We saw some truly unique properties during our home search. One of the most memorable included a Disney-themed house with a theater room that could only be described as a Disney ride and a pool/grotto area reminiscent of Pirates of the Caribbean! I'm not kidding. And we can't forget the stinky house--we literally had to run out to escape the scent of ... well, I don't know, and I don't want to know!
Back to Sofia.
"When we first looked at the house we ended up buying, I hated it. It was purple and green on the outside and horrible brown on the inside. But I came around. When we bought it, we started fixing up the house right away and it now looks pretty nice (I also have a really big bedroom).
Overall, I learned a lot about buying and selling houses, such as: the person selling the house can put their house on the market for as much as they want, staging a house with furniture helps you judge the room size, and, most importantly, sometimes, you have to settle for less."