Recovering from Loss: When It’s the Right Time to Sell Your Home and Move On

Guest post by Lucille Rosetti

After you lose a loved one, your home can feel haunted. Old memories living there can perpetuate the sting of losing a loved one months or even years after the loss, and sometimes, it’s in our best interest to move on from old wounds and the places associated with them in order to seek out a fresh start. If you’ve been considering moving, here are some things to keep in mind to help the process go as smoothly as possible.

Finding a New Home You’ve decided to sell your home, so you must find a new place to live. Sometimes, moving to a new neighborhood can be enough to shake some of the painful memories associated with an old home; other times, you may need to change cities or even states to escape the pain of losing a loved one.

Before you relocate, you should ensure that your job can either move with you or that you are still within the proximity to comfortably commute to your workplace. Before making a big move, you should also consider any family that currently lives near you. During vulnerable times, such as after the loss of a loved one, you may benefit from having family and friends close by, so moving away from everyone you hold dear might not be the best decision. You should also consider how a big move might affect your children. Keep them as involved with the moving process as you can to ensure their needs are being heard and met.

Selling Your Old Home

The buying and selling process can be complicated, especially when balancing both simultaneously. How you approach the process depends greatly on the time of year, your financial situation, and your ideal timeline. Buying in a seller’s market means the market will be much more competitive for buyers. In a buyer’s market, the buyer will have many more listings at their disposal, boosting their chances of a quick closing.

Being both a buyer and a seller means you will have to navigate the pros and cons of both markets. There’s no guaranteed method for navigating them successfully, and you might need to employ a combination of renting, loans, and contingency offers in order to buy and sell at the same time. Whether you’re buying or selling, it’s crucial to learn about home prices in your area. For example, the median sales price for a home in Arlington is $615,000.

In order to get the highest possible price for your home, you’ll need to stage it properly. At this time, you’ll want to declutter your home and raise its curb appeal before putting it up for sale. You can hire a maid service to give your home a thorough deep cleaning. Consider any other improvements to make your home more attractive to buyers. For instance, you can refinish your wood floors (in nearby Washington, DC, this service costs an average of $2,078).

Packing Up Once you know where you’re going, it’s time to start packing up and planning the actual move. Be sure to research moving companies by comparing prices and reviews online, and take the time to get organized. As challenging as the process is, the better organized you are, the easier this will be.

The time will come when you’ll have to pack up your things. Sorting through personal belongings can be a painful experience after suffering a loss. Your initial response may be to toss anything that’s tied too closely with the deceased, but getting rid of all those old mementos may not be beneficial in the long run, so try not to make any hasty decisions. If you need to downsize your belongings to accommodate a new, smaller home but there are items you can’t bear to part with just yet, consider renting a storage unit to house some of your excess.

As you begin to reconcile with your loss, you may actually long for some of the mementos that were once too difficult to face, such as photo albums and jewelry. Keep these items boxed up separately, and tuck them away somewhere in your new home. When the time is right, you’ll appreciate the chance to look back over the wonderful memories you shared with your loved one.

Sometimes, a change of scenery is what we need to truly move on from a painful loss. Placing ourselves in a new environment can open us up to new experiences and give us the chance to heal.

Photo Credit: Pixabay.com