Buying and selling a home can be a stressful experience

[attach]5974[/attach]With the summer weather back again, we can all enjoy our city even more than during the colder months. This spring has been a busy time for me and my family. We are moving into a new house in a new neighbourhood.

Many people are doing the same thing right now. Toronto’s booming housing market tells us this. People are selling and buying — moving into the city and out of the city, into a condo or out of a condo, into a house or out of a house.

I feel very lucky that we were able to find a fixer-upper in the neighbourhood we’ve been trying to move into for a decade. It’s the only way we could afford to move to Yonge and Davisville. Housing prices are so high nowadays, it makes your head spin.

But before we could finalize the purchase of our new home, we had to sell our old one. It was a risky move to buy before we sold, but it was a move we had to do to make sure we found the house we wanted. It was dangerous because we needed to do some work on our old house before we sold it.

So April was a month of replacing the old knob and tube wiring in the 1928 house and renew two old bathrooms. We had to do the work so we could get the price we wanted. The wiring would have scared away most potential buyers because most insurance companies won’t cover houses that still have it. So much work was to be done, we had to move out. The work was finally completed the very day our house went on the market.

We sold it in a week’s time. We had two things going for us: a great agent and our old house being in a desirable midtown neighbourhood. Nonetheless, the month was stressful. Our two young boys passed the time well but may have been more relieved than us that that part of our journey was over.

The next part was moving into our new house. We needed to do a lot of work on it before we could move in at the end of June.

To line up all the contractors to do the work, purchase all that needed to be purchased, watch our spending so we don’t go over our budget, and move in after the work was done — all this took major planning. I was reassured by the quality of contractors I chose to carry out the work. I became the project manager at the head of a team assembled to fix our family home — a good team that was tasked with making our dream a reality.

All has gone well so far. We’ll be moving in at the end of June. The new owners of our house will be moving in after we leave. We will miss our old home but we cannot let our attachment hold us back. We will have our memories. Soon we will have new memories made in our new house.

This experience has been exciting and filled with life lessons. Thinking through what we wanted, projecting the time line, putting a plan together, and putting the plan into action with the right contractors were the key things. If we started off on the wrong foot, we would have tumbled. So much is at stake when a family home is involved.

We feel privileged to join the neighbourhood of our choice when so many are losing the hope of finding the home that they can love.

Don’t lose hope. Everyone’s ideal is out there to find.