My house has been on the market for approximately 14 days. Since then, we have had 8 showings. I am assured by family, friends and realtors that this is a positive sign and quite impressive, considering houses in our area generally sit for 8-12 months with sometimes as little as 3 to 4 showings over that time period.

The company we chose to represent us is a marketing maniac. Our house is showcased on their own TV channel, published in various magazines and newspapers and pops-up on numerous websites that display over 20 pictures of it along with a virtual tour, all of which were taken by a professional photographer. My father always said, “You get what you pay for.” I took his advice and couldn’t be happier with what I’ve seen so far, but it’s the waiting game that’s driving me crazy.

Keeping my house on stand-by for impromptu showings has turned me into an obsessive-compulsive mother and wife. “Don’t eat over the carpet! Take off your shoes! Did you wipe the dogs feet?” have become some of my daily rants. I don’t even feel like I can cook for fear that I’ll dirty the kitchen. My house is under scrutiny from discriminating buyers and the competition is fierce, so everything must look perfect—all the time—and it’s exhausting.

However, regardless of my efforts to keep an immaculate-looking house, I don’t have a typical house for my neighborhood. It’s not contemporary, nor is it traditional. Someone once referred to it a transitional. It’s open-concept, with a few outdated features such as a yellow-brick road in the entry, brass fixtures here and there, golden-oak everywhere (except the kitchen) and the killer—a Jacuzzi tub in the
master bedroom. No one likes the tub in the bedroom. Why couldn’t the builder have put it in the bathroom where it belongs? We toyed with the idea of ripping the eyesore out, but several people advised against it, saying someone will either love it or, they’ll rip it out. I don’t even like baths, but there it is and there it will remain.

On the upside: we completely remodeled our kitchen, substantially updated two downstairs bathrooms all with granite and stainless steel fixtures, and everyone seemingly loves the neighborhood. Not only that, we’ve had several people say it’s priced right. So, what gives? Why aren’t people writing offers? If only it were that easy.

Whether it’s the openness of the house, the outdated master bath, the fact that the only room upstairs is the master bedroom or the god-awful Jacuzzi tub that turns potential buyers away, my husband and I know that there will be only one buyer that appreciates the house as much as we did 12 years ago. If only that buyer would hurry up, so we could move into the very old, outdated, 12-acre hobby farm that remains contingent on us selling our current house, everything would be worth the effort.

With Thanksgiving and Christmas rapidly approaching, buyer traffic will quickly fade along with the warm air only to hibernate until spring. Until then, we can only sit, wait, and hope that someone else doesn’t come along and put in a non-contingent offer on the 12-acre hobby farm we hope to call our home. The waiting game—you never can quite tell what’s going to happen.