We put an offer on a home. A contingent offer, which meant we had to sell our house…fast. We hadn’t even started the process of getting ours ready to sell. A week later, the entire country shut down. Daycares were now closed - and we had to keep our house showroom ready at a moment’s notice with two toddlers at home.

Also, Curbed Atlanta had a habit of using an old photo of our house as their go-to stock photo talking about COVID-19 and the Atlanta real estate market. Thousands of homes in Atlanta and they consistently used ours. What were the odds? That didn’t help our selling chances much.

A sane person would have backed out of the deal and hit the pause button. To be honest, we kicked it around on several occasions too. Was the stress going to be worth it? We rolled the dice and it worked out! In six weeks we went from window shopping to living in our new house during the worst viral pandemic in a century.

Here’s how.

We Didn’t Plan It This Way

We had been house hunting for a bit up to the point we put down an offer on a home. Our very patient realtor had taken us through a little over a dozen homes in various neighborhoods in Atlanta for the last couple of months. We finally found a home that checked more boxes than any house we had seen. Knowing it would go fast, we made an offer on it the day we toured it.

A few days later, the country shut down and we hadn’t listed our house yet.

So we had a choice. We could back out and hit pause or go ahead and list the house. We had 30 days to sell the house. If we didn’t sell it by a certain date, we were going to hit the brakes and start the process over again later in the year. There would be more houses. There would be other buyers…right?

Have a Good Realtor That Prioritizes Safety

Our realtor Ginger was awesome. She had helped us get buy and sell a house a couple of years back when we found out we were expecting our second child. Ginger was great about helping us get staged and going the extra mile for getting a sale turned around the last time - and proved that again. When it came to staging and talking us out of panicking when more COVID-related news would hit, we really could not have done it all without her.

Ginger setup sanitation stations all through the house when we had showings to help keep our home safe. She vetted tours before anyone set foot in our home. She did a great job of threading the needle between aggressively getting our house sold on a tight timeline but not being overly liberal on the foot traffic in and out of our house.

Even without a pandemic, I fully believe a good realtor team is worth every penny.

Be Flexible and Embrace the Suck

Selling a house is stressful. Selling a house with two small children who want nothing more than to wreck anything you clean is really stressful. Doing all that with them at home ALL THE TIME and still having two full time job demands is a new kind of stress I hope we never walk through again.

When someone wants to view your house, you’re at their scheduling mercy and not your own. You’ve got to get the house showroom ready, quickly, and get everyone out of the house. So then you have to take your kids somewhere….but nowhere is open to take your kids.

In our case, we went to an open field near our house. The kids could run and play. We still had cell reception and AirPods to take calls as needed. I even presented a website over the phone from memory while driving around Atlanta with a kid in the backseat.

You make it work.

Be Creative on How You Sell Your House

In a pandemic, you don’t exactly have people wrapped around the block trying to buy a house. We didn’t get our full asking price. That said, we did get creative on other aspects of buying the house (closing costs, inspections, etc) that still got us to the point where we needed to be walking away from the closing table.

Define what “enough” is ahead of time.. The point of it all during a pandemic isn’t to be greedy. Know what you need to make everything work. Once you establish that, deal-making is simplified. It also helps you stick to your guns on certain aspects and know when you need to walk away.

In the end, we were able to close out with the down payment for our new home and enough leftover to cover the moving truck expenses almost down to the dollar. We also had very little headache after the inspection. We could just focus on moving.

Teamwork and Focus On the Finish Line

Megan and I had every reason to get in fights. To bicker. To snap at each other. We were both exhausted, not totally adjusted to our new “routine” and engaged in the stressful process of moving. That said, we really didn’t get in fights at all. We were aligned on what we had to do. We had equally demanding situations with our work. We knew the only way we would survive would be to stick together and work as a unit.

This season had a lot of stress but this is probably the best season of teamwork we have had in our marriage so far.

We also had great help from Megan’s parents. We broke social distancing rules a bit and took the kids to their place during the move. Not having the toddlers made the actual week of moving a lot less painful. With the days off of work and the kids being out for a bit, it was comparatively the least stressful week we’ve had this year. One of the few circumstances where moving felt like a vacation of sorts.

Was It Worth It?

Absolutely. The interest rates were super low. It’s also easy for me to say it was worth it because everything ultimately worked out and I know how the story ends.

We love the new place. It’s smaller but fits our family’s needs a lot better. It’s more walkable to a park Our new place is very much worth the temporary headache of selling our old house.

As long as you:

1. Work as a team

2. Know it’s going to be hard and embrace it

3. Don’t get greedy

….selling a house during a pandemic is very doable.

Honestly, I think those three things can help you get a lot of things in life done.