Sax Maniac's Journal: It is finally done.

Thank the Lord. After... what, six months? More? It feels like about two years. I finally sold my old house. I'm still trying to decide whether this is the worst experience in my life, or just the second worst. It's a toss-up with jury duty.

Never trust real estate agents. Mine overshot the value of the home by $75,000, a 21% error. I'm now convinced they simply don't care. They make money by you selling. Thus, they are going to tell you whatever you need to hear to make you sell... including inflating the price.

Oh, maybe just that first agent had a bad time? How about three agents, all local, that I interviewed on the second round? They were only off by only $40,000.

I did everything they told me to do. You get a laundry list of things you must fix and should fix, and I did everything. I rebuilt a bathroom. New beige carpet. New deck. New plate glass. Paint everything off-white. Lots of landscaping work. New fixtures. Replaced a lot of trim. Redecorate everything. Removed the screen. New closet doors. Clean the windows. Make every room practically empty. It went on and on, for months.

I knew the agent was getting desperate, and a bit silly, when very late in the process he said I should replace the kitchen faucet with a fancy stainless one. The kitchen faucet? You mean all the people that came in, would not buy the house... because of the kitchen faucet? I even did it, but I was thinking to myself: this is really stupid. Grasping at straws.

In the end, not a single buyer cared. They all said the same thing: "busy road, don't like the driveway".