How to Emotionally Detach From Your Home When You Need to Sell It

Your emotional connection to home begins the moment you first enter it and begin to imagine your life there. You start mentally arranging the furniture, imagining the parties you will throw, and imagining your future life in this space. From now on, a huge part of your life is tied to this property, and this can lead many of us to lose sight of what a house really is: probably the largest financial asset you will ever own.

This can be problematic if your finances start to move in the wrong direction because you may not be as objective about the value of your home as you need to be. This emotional connection often inspires people to go to extreme lengths to “save” their home. You can win this bet, of course. Or maybe not – and you have more options than you think. Sometimes selling it before everything goes to hell is the only way to keep control of your life.

First: don’t panic if your finances suddenly become tight

Panic is the first emotion most of us experience when we lose a job or face some other financial disaster. If you suffer a job loss, a costly illness, or some other major loss of some sort and find yourself unable to pay all of your bills, there is often a problem of pride—no one wants to admit they can’t pay their bills.

But your first step shouldn’t be to shuffle everything around to prioritize your mortgage payments. This can eat into your savings very quickly and leave you with little room to maneuver. Instead, take a deep breath and explore your options: find out if you qualify for the Homeowner Assistance Fund program in your state or other assistance programs. Then contact your lender. You may be able to negotiate a revised payment plan or enter into an abstention agreement . If you have equity in the home, you can also get a cash refinance that will lower your mortgage payments just enough to give you some breathing room.

If these options don’t work for you, or if they don’t change the math enough to save your house, it’s time to sell because pushing to the bitter end just because you love the place is almost always a huge mistake. error.

When you need to either turn on your home by default or disconnect from it

Fighting for a house you can no longer afford can empty your bank accounts pretty quickly. And once you burn those savings, you can become delinquent on your mortgage and your lender can start foreclosure proceedings . At this point, you lose control of the narrative: you have no say in how much the house sells for, who it sells to, or what happens to the proceeds – you can get excess funds if the house sells for more than you should, or you can end up with an insufficient solution for the remainder of the balance. This means you just let someone else sell your house and you still owe the money. And on top of that, your credit score is likely to deteriorate dramatically due to missed payments.

By putting the house up for sale once the cold hard math tells you it’s a long way off to hold on to it, you can maximize the selling price, control the process, and possibly save your savings so it can stretch out while you figure out what’s in it. case. the rest of your financial life. Of course, it can be difficult to emotionally withdraw from home, but there are a few things you can do:

• Depersonalize. If you’ve made the difficult decision to sell your home, you should probably clean up the mess and make the home as neutral as possible . By delving into this process and removing all those photos, knick-knacks, souvenirs, and other memorabilia, you will make the space impersonal.
• Act like it’s already sold. Saying you’ve decided to sell your home is one thing, but acting like it’s actually happening is another. Practical steps can make your subconscious mind accept reality: downsize your assets, do DIY repairs and cosmetic changes to your home as recommended by your real estate agent, start seriously looking for a new home, and start telling friends and neighbors. you are moving. The more steps you take, the easier it will be to view your home as the Past.
• Focus on the negatives. No home is perfect, and yours most likely has a long list of annoyances that you have learned to ignore or tolerate. Now heed Emperor Palpatine’s advice and let your hatred make you stronger: remind yourself of a leaky roof, creaky floors, a third-floor sauna-like bedroom, or an icy bathroom floor.
• Focus on finances. Tell yourself that you are not losing your cherished home, you are making a financial transaction . Focus on what you get from the deal—peace of mind, more financial opportunity—rather than what you lose.

Only you know your financial situation, and only you know if the struggle to maintain a home is worth it. The bottom line is to try and take the emotional attachment to the property out of the equation and make smart financial decisions about your home before circumstances step in and make those decisions for you.