When Sellers Develop Emotional Ties to a Home

Tessa, Pica and Jackson watch Sacramento Realtor Elizabeth Weintraub work at her desk.

There is no better way to start the day in the life of a Sacramento Realtor than to begin by entering the term cat constipation into Google. Our diabetic cat Pica appears to be constipated. It wasn’t Tessa rolling cat poop balls around the house for amusement the other week, it was Pica trying to give us a message the best way he knows how. One of the feline sites about constipation even depicted cartoons of cats depositing poop in the litter box and my favorite: active regurgitation. It reminded me of the puking rainbow mouth you can do with Snapchat now. Cats, no matter how you look at it, are gross creatures.

At least they are quiet when my phone rings. But when I answer my phone, there is nobody else in my office area except these 3 cats, so they naturally assume I am talking to them. Even when it’s not my sweet kitty voice. Especially when I’m saying stuff like, this is the worst pest report I’ve seen in 10 years, or what do you mean you haven’t ordered the appraisal yet when the contingency release is due tomorrow? The three cats — they just sit there on the floor and purr. Or rollover to expose bellies to the ceiling.

This will be my memory when we eventually sell our home many years from now, when we’re old and feeble. Everybody develops emotional ties to a home. In fact, my client just asked for photographs this morning of her home in Elk Grove. I always offer to send my professional photography to my sellers so they have a keepsake album of their home. Just because they are selling a home does not mean they don’t have an emotional attachment to it. It’s hard to leave any home if you’ve lived there for a while because all of your memories of years gone by were created in that environment. Unless it’s a home of sad memories.

I have another client who would not go into her home when I showed up to shoot photographs earlier this year. She had too many unhappy memories and did not want to revisit them. She sat in her car in the driveway while I went inside to take photos. When I came out, she appeared severely depressed. I asked if she wanted a few photos of her children that I spotted lying on the floor. It’s not like I wanted to force her to go back inside, but I did want her to know that the photos were there and they might mean something to her. Not to mention, she probably did not want to leave them for strangers.

After she came back outside holding a few mementos, I talked to her for a while, explaining what I would do to sell her home. I don’t think she cared, so I stopped going into detail and just hugged her. That’s when she burst into tears. Selling Sacramento real estate is not about the numbers. It’s about the people. And preserving the emotional ties to a home.