JOINING THE CLUB

One of my managers at the Fonville Morisey office at Hwy 54 says that all of us who provide real estate brokerage services to our clients should move every four or five years… just so we can fully understand what our Sellers and Buyers are going through. But that’s not the reason that my wife and I have put our home on the market.

When our son, Cole, was finishing up his middle school years we looked for an upper school environment that would suit him well. We found it in Orange County at Cedar Ridge high school. We lived in Durham at the time and, after a year of making two 40-minute trips a day to and from Cedar Ridge, we decided to move to Hillsborough. Cole is now nearly half-way through his college career at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis. After graduation he won’t be home for quite a while and my wife and I find the home we live in is now a little too big and a little too far away from church and work and such. So we’re moving. Call it downsizing and centralizing.

Not that that makes it any easier. Like many of the Sellers I represent, I’ve gone though my quite comfortable home and intentionally made it w-a-y less comfortable. I’ve given my family the same counsel I give clients concerning “clutter,” and how distracting it is to a Buyer (and I now have a whole new perspective of how that counsel sounds to the Seller’s ear!). I’ve made that list of chores — big and small — that I’ve intended to get to forever but always found a way to put off. And — although it’s only been a few days at this writing — I’m experiencing the anxiety that Sellers feel regarding showings on their home: First, when am I going to have some, and Second, what might they NOT like about the place that I care for so much?

I tell clients all the time that the emotional ties we have to the places we live are strong… stronger than we might realize. Homes, I believe, live and breathe and communicate and knit themselves into the very fiber of our souls. Our homes represent safety and security, protection and love. The intentional rending of ourselves away from that — no matter what the reason — can be painful. So… for the 92 families that I’ve shepherded through this process since 2004…

I’m getting a new appreciation for how you might have felt along the way.
So maybe my manager is right. And I intend for this experience to make me a better representative for my clients in the future.

Robert Flinn, REALTOR®
919-698-2040 (Direct Line)
919-402-1242 (Office)
rflinn@fmrealty.com (email)