Our neighbors across the street are moving. How can I tell? The first hint is the “For Sale” sign in front of their house. However, I should have known they were moving even before the sign went up.
Here’s why:
We’ve lived across the street from them for several years. They’re nice folks. Generally, they keep their lawn trimmed and house maintained, though there are times when the Home Owners Association have had to politely remind them to do these tasks. (I’m on the HOA board.)
Recently, I noticed one of the family members was painting their mailbox post. It’s wood, and needs a fresh coat every so often. I was impressed because as far as I knew the HOA hadn’t said anything to them.
Then I noticed that they trimmed all their bushes and trees. Next came new landscaping updates—mulch, new stones around their trees, and such.
In the last few days, they have power-washed their house. Just this morning, I could see they were getting new carpeting.
Yes, all of these updates are because they are moving. In order to get as much money as they can from their house, they are spending a lot of time, money, and energy to make it a nicer place to live.
I’ll admit that when my wife and I have sold houses in the past, we’ve done some last minute touches to help make it more attractive. Sometimes we’ve joked, “Now that we’ve done these last few things, we really like the house and don’t want to leave it!”
When we moved into the house we are in now, we knew there were things we wanted to do to it. The goal was to make it a place we would want to live in here and now, which would also help make it more valuable down the road if we moved again. The idea was to do a little each year—and it has worked.
We’ve customized our house not only for it to be a place we love living in, but also to help increase its value.
Back to the human nature and logic comment, it strikes me as odd that people time and again spend so much effort on making their house super nice just as they are about to leave it.
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