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In Search of Home

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This place isn’t just a house. Memorable moments of laughter and sorrow meld together to make it special. My boys grew up here – in our home.

Home is not just where the heart is or where a man hangs his hat. It is a haven of peace, safety, rest and love. Get bullied on the school bus? Come inside, shut the door, cry out the tale, have a cheese stick and move upstairs to play some World of Warcraft.

Your girlfriend broke up with you? It’s okay to cry on Mom’s shoulder, stare at your ceiling and push your food around on your plate.

Home is more secure than the Tower of London. The key on this door keeps troublemakers and judgment locked out and love and acceptance locked in.

It’s the very essence of home that makes many aspects of selling this property difficult. I’ve mentioned the price issue before.

There’s more.

Welcome to one really bad weekend

It was probably easier for hubby and I to agree on names for our children than it was to settle on a single house plan. We had to, though, in order to get a builder to give us a bid.

I already mentioned the worthlessness of open houses in my neighborhood. Our realtor advertised a drawing for a $100 Visa gift card for everyone who viewed our property that Sunday. It was sure to draw the crowds.

First call:

The bid from the builder is a certain amount. Said certain amount puts the combined lot and house to $400,000. That is $50,000 or more out of our budget. Even if we sell our house at full list price, we aren’t in the market for something that expensive.

Second call:

No one showed up for the open house. People aren’t coming to look at other times either. What this tells us is that the property isn’t priced right. Can you consider dropping the list price another $15,000 to get it in the next price bracket?

Hubby feels stressed that we have no place to move when our house sells. He feels cheated because all of our labor and improvements to the house mean nothing in the current market (or maybe it’s the neighborhood).

Now, he needs to come up with $50,000 more for the new house while getting $15,000 less for the old one.

This whole “it’s time to scale down to a one-level home” isn’t working out so well for us.

It’s bad enough to leave seventeen years of memories behind. But do we have to give the place away? It there any way we will be able to purchase the home we wish to inhabit until we die?

Maybe I don’t want to sell my home after all. I certainly don’t want to be homeless.

Can you put a numeric value on home?

What do you think? Add to the discussion here.