Beast Blog: Selling A House

Selling A House

We finally close on selling our house on Tuesday and none of this has gone as we expected.  When I sold my house three years ago it was a fun and joyful experience, but this time has not been the same.

Three years ago I elicited the help of a good friend, Steve Ritz, who is a remarkably smart and successful realtor in Orlando.  He and his business partner Linda share the work, and I found this really interesting.  He explained to me that he did the part of the business about buying a house, and Linda handled the part about selling a house.  When I asked why, he explained something I had never considered.

When someone is buying a house, it’s usually an experience of happy anticipation and joy.  This is a new start in a place that someone wants to live, and the process of looking at houses and finding the right one for you can be arduous but is ultimately fun.

When someone is selling a house, the situation is different.  It is often fraught with pain or drama.  I had never considered this, since the two times I had sold my house had been times when I was excited to move to the next new chapter in my life.  But Steve explained that often when people are selling a house, it’s because of a death in the family, a divorce, or some other unpleasant scenario.  So Linda is better at dealing with clients involved in this potential drama and she handles those situations.

Fast forward to 2025, and my husband Steve and I needed to sell our house for reasons that were not all joyful.  It was the right move, and we were ready to move forward to a new experience, but it was painful.  Couple this with a difficult and volatile market where the buyers had all the power and the value of our home kept dropping.  Not fun.

Now bring in the next kick in the pants: our neighbors sold in 9 days for the price they were asking.  It took us six months and continual price reductions to finally get to the finish line.  Perhaps the most painful part were buyers who, sensing their power and our desperation, made several cruel moves to hurt us.  It has not been pleasant.

One very bright note in our story was that we decided to change realtors midstream, and our new realtor Michelle Benson has been a dream.  She loved our house, encouraged us through the process, and guided us through the difficult emotions of price reductions and costs incurred to get the house to sell.  We absolutely could not have done this without her, and I want to highlight the incredible impact that a positive attitude and encouragement can have on someone who is struggling.  Michelle lifted us up when we were down and shared her own optimism at a critical time.  We can’t thank her enough.

I share all of this just to say that we often don’t understand all of the nuances of a situation, and we need to pay attention to what people need.  We can never know what someone is going through, or what problems are bombarding them.  Every situation is different, just like every school band program is completely different.  So avoid painting with a broad stroke.  When you see a group perform, you cannot possibly know what challenges they have overcome or how much progress they have made.  A small band with 25 kids may not be reaching a high level of execution, but it’s entirely possible the experience of gritting it out through the process has created young people with resilience and pride in their work.

And like Michelle was for us, your kind word or encouragement could have a profound impact on someone who needs your support or belief in them.

Never assume you know what’s going on in someone’s life.  As for me and my husband, we will be okay.  We have not had the outcome we hoped for, but we are moving on nonetheless and are excited for our next chapter.

I encourage you to treat everyone with kindness.  You can’t know their battles, and they may really need a friendly smile from you today.

Tim Hinton

September 26, 2025

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