The Relationships We Build with the Places We Live
Our time in Austin is ending, and it’s more emotional than I thought it’d be.
Note: Hola desde Cartagena! If you’ve been trying to reach me, I’ve been a bit out of pocket (more detail below) and I cannot receive texts. WhatsApp or email are your best bets until we return on Sunday, May 19. Thank you also for your patience with my inconsistency in sending out Yes, Misstrix. Check out the P.S. for more about that :)
If you’re wondering what kind of psycho turns down a full-price cash offer on her home because it “doesn’t feel right,” allow me to introduce myself. I’m that person. It’s me. But let me back up a bit. A little context is important here because while you may still question my sanity at the end of this story, at least you’ll know where I’m coming from.
As some of you know, Yes, Misstrix, R., Baby E. and the three pups are moving to Atlanta. We absolutely must be there by Thanksgiving, and our real estate agent low-key scared the bejesus out of us when she told us that after July is where house sales go to die until the following year. That knowledge is what prompted me to suggest that we drop everything to get our house fully ready for the market in the 10 days before we left the country for another 14.
And we did it. By the skin of our teeth and with the help of a gigantic, strategically placed fern to cover a color-match paint mishap we didn’t have the time nor the energy to remedy, we put our little abode on Sabal Palm out for the world to bid on and promptly begged off for Cartagena, Colombia.
Before we left, R. fixed and finessed, potted and planted, patched and roller painted an entire ceiling, all the cabinets , many of the rooms and most of the floorboards. I helped where I could, kept the Bean (mostly) away from the wet paint and came up with a pun-ny solution to our unsightly palm out front. I also staged that bitch (our house) to the nines.
Then, we deep cleaned like our lives depended on it. By 3:15 am on Saturday morning, we did final touches, loaded our luggage and a slumbering baby into a Lyft, and said a little prayer as we pulled away from the drive and made our way to Austin-Bergstrom International Airport. We arrived in South America fully fucking exhausted. The ungodly humidity and hours-away check-in didn’t exactly put us in vacation mode, nor did our bank card getting declined before we could withdraw pesos for a cab ride to the Airbnb.
But we made it! We finally checked in, cleaned up and went out for sustenance. It quickly became clear that this is not the vacation we would have selected if we’d known we’d be living all the drama of a deadline-driven HGTV program without the glitz and glamour of being well-compensated DIY celebrity hosts.
One trip to the walled city that included battling a bulky stroller with malfunctioning wheels solidified the fact that we might be vacationing very differently than planned. The Bean brought a new element to international travel. My stress levels remained high.
Which is probably why the news that we had received a full-price cash offer on our house was not the wondrous remedy to all our problems that our real estate agent anticipated. R. was thrilled. My reaction caught me completely off-guard. I was devastated. R. was ready to accept immediately. I wanted a couple days to consider.
Things started to go seriously off the rails at that point. The agent was offended that we didn’t respond to the offer (with an acceptance, of course) within two hours of receiving it. She proceeded to rapid-fire text our agent, threatening to withdraw the offer. She believed we were trying to prompt a bidding war by waiting for multiple offers, playing a game I was not at all considering when I asked, in light of this offer, for a temperature feel surrounding the sale of our house.
Our agent didn’t seem to think there would be other offers, at least not ones as attractive as this one. I remained unconvinced. I wanted some time to think and consult my intuition. Jumping on the first offer so quickly seemed a little desperate. This became a theme. Many times throughout the process, I have felt the weight of everyone else’s nerves. I’ve come to learn that I’m the only one who wasn’t extremely risk averse.
When we first decided whether to sell the house or maintain it as a rental, I was firmly on the side of rental. R., of course, was not. This low-level infuriated me, (hey, I cannot be held accountable for the feelings I felt when Mercury was in retrograde) but when I sat in meditation the next morning, the message I received was clear: Sell. You’ll be happier, and you’ll make more than you think. I was annoyed that R. was right, but I never doubted what I heard. Taking the cash offer was logical. There was no real reason not to. Intuition, however, is never logical. It doesn’t “make sense,” but it’s more accurate.
So, while the buyer’s agent lost her damn mind, and R. and our agent panicked a little at my resistance, I held firm. I was very anxious, but I wasn’t about to be bullied out of my fucking house. I wanted time. The buyer’s agent pulled the offer, but then proceeded to continue to pester us with questions in a manner that told me she wasn’t going anywhere. All the while, I got angrier and angrier. This agent wanted to play chicken. She wasn’t prepared for the fact that I wasn’t going to blink.
Austin has a special place in my heart. Outside of Portland, OR, where I met and fell in love with R., it is the first city that has ever felt like home. I moved to Portland when I was 26. Prior to that, I lived in many cities in Ohio and New York, none of which felt like the place I was meant to be. Falling in love changed that.
But even back then, moving in with R. felt like a negotiation of home, rather than the real deal. I broke the lease on my beloved lady apartment in 2016 and filled the townhouse R. once shared with his first wife with my things. It wasn’t so much an act of building a home with my boyfriend (then fiancé and then husband), as it was residing in a home that I’d never had any real claim to. This never bothered me for a long time.
We found ways to transform the space a bit—repainting a bathroom, installing a wood statement wall—but when we decided to search for a house where both our names would be coupled together on the deed, it felt like a relief. We’d soon have a home to really call our own.
Except that we wouldn’t. Not for a while anyway. R. got laid off, and we started to get antsy in Portland. An adventure was beckoning. We decided to seize the moment. We sold the house with the intention of leaving the U.S. At the end of the summer, Thailand would become our new home—indefinitely. Before we left, we traveled the country, staying at the occasional campsite and in an abundance of random bedrooms in other people’s homes.
Then, as they say, the pandemic hit. We lived separately—R. stuck in Kerala, India, me with our two pups in Bo Sang, Thailand. When we finally got back to the States, we lived with family in Ohio while R. constructed the van that we would take for another bout around the country.
After a time living as nomads, we returned to a city we’d loved along our travels. The Lone Star State’s Cap City gave us the music, BBQ, weather and warm welcome we’d been wanting for our home base. We bought our first home together in a seller’s market for many monies above asking. We spent the next few years realizing the vision of what we always knew it could be.
So, when it came time to let this bit of real estate go, I began to feel all the feels. I worked hard to stand in my power about what I wanted and what was right for our family, but that’s not to say I didn’t feel a little lost throughout this emotionally volatile time.
I had moments where I wondered if I was letting my emotional attachment to a home I’d transformed into a modern vintage wonderland, one where I’d birthed a baby and filled the spaces with incredible energy, was preventing me from seeing the situation clearly. But I was just so mad. The aggression and pressure from everyone else felt incredibly triggering.
With the help of a spiritual mentor, I began to realize that a variety of elements were at play here. For one, I believed the house was worth more than the list price. We made the decision to list at this price due to comps in the neighborhood and what the market seemed like it would support.
But there weren’t a lot of great comparative homes in our neck of the woods. Most were filled with apartment-grade materials and appliances. Not one had a yellow Smeg or statement wallpaper or intentional splashes of color meant to evoke pure joy.
Our home is a hidden gem. We had put a lot of work into this space, including a new water heater, a new roof, new floors, a complete renovation of the kitchen and both bathrooms. Accepting a full cash offer at that price point felt like a fire sale. It didn’t sit right with me.
Another consideration was that I didn’t like that someone else felt entitled to my home simply because they put forth a great offer. I didn’t like feeling pushed around. This has been a thing for me for a long time, something that goes as far back to my childhood and (I believe) past lives, too. I needed to stand my ground.
By this point, R. was turned off by the whole thing, too. He wouldn’t have turned down the offer, per se, but he wasn’t as excited by the rollercoaster either. I asked him to trust me. I knew I sounded a bit off my rocker, but I also knew that R. believes in my intuition. “It’s not crazy if you’re right,” he said.
During the time when our cash offer was officially rescinded (but clearly not totally gone), another offer came in for $7k above asking. This felt much better to me. It included an appraisal addendum that didn’t make it the sure thing the cash offer was (and was again, as it had been un-rescinded and sent a second time after I refused to answer any more questions about what had become a non-offer), but it got us to the net price we (I) had in mind from the sale.
The second buyer was also a woman who felt like a better fit for the home. She wrote us a letter that talked about how the house made her feel. She mentioned that she was starting her life over in Austin and that she saw the new version of herself thriving within the walls of our very-loved 1,100 square feet. I never thought I’d care about who lived in the home on Sabal Palm Road. It turns out I do.
And that’s where we are now. We accepted the second offer. We will see what the appraisal comes back at, if the offer stands. But ultimately, I’m fine with whatever happens. If things fall apart and go back on the market, so be it. I’ll let the chips fall where they may because I believe the message I heard months ago: Sell. You’ll be happier, and you’ll make more than you think.
The challenging part about listening to the universe is that the spirit world doesn’t often say “when.” So, it is conceivable that something could happen, and we go back onto the market during a slow time. Or the buyer loses their loan and must back out. Or we are asked to make up some of the appraisal cost and we refuse. Or a million other things!
Fortunately, I know that anything can change for the better at any moment. That just because the market has trends and tends to operate a certain way, it doesn’t mean our experience will be that of the “norm.” Homes are bought and sold every single day. The right buyer for us will appear. She is already here, or she’s not the right one. It’s really as simple as that.
With pleasure,
Yes, Misstrix
P.S. So…I am completely ashamed to acknowledge how poorly I’ve been keeping up with this newsletter lately. Yes, a lot of stressful life stuff is happening, but I am used to over-delivering on my projects, not under-delivering like my life depends on it. As a thank you for those who have become paid subscribers, I am offering a second year of the newsletter for free.
For those who have been paying monthly, I will comp a year for free once you hit the 12 month mark. Anyone who would like to become a paid subscriber in the next couple of months will get two years for the price of one. I’m figuring it out on the back end, so you don’t need to do anything. Thank you for your patience while I get my life together! And please know that I love all of my subscribers. It’s a joy to write for you :)