I have an observation about the whole moving process.
Buying and selling a house is similar to other transactions. It is also unlike any other transaction (obviously, but not all due to size). Basically the real estate market is about exchanging one object for another similar object, same as many other purchases. If you buy one oven, you probably don’t need the old one around any more, so you get rid of it. This can be done by dumping it in the trash, giving it away to a needy cause, or selling it. The same isn’t true of a house. A house sticks to you more. You can’t dump it in the trash can, although I suppose you could torch it but then there are a lot of ugly questions, so that isn’t advisable. You can give it away, but a house is quite valuable, leading to the third option, selling it. Chances are the financial plan concerning the move was to sell one house to pay for buying another. In other transactions that isn’t an integral part of the plan. Buy the new item and then, at a future date, sell the old, at your convenience, for what you can.
But because of the financial plan with a house, you are at the mercy of people you don’t know. You can’t move on with your life until you sell a very large item for a large amount of money. So you have to prostitute your home. Take something you’ve loved for a long time, dress it up nicely so that people think it’s easy, put on makeup so people don’t see the cracks in the facade, and parade it around for a bunch of strangers and hope they’ll give you the money you want to take her away.
When you put it like that, I feel dirty.
I’ve heard a similar observation made about “This Old House”. It’s house porn. You see things on the television that look more beautiful than is realistic. People work on them, and look like they are having a great time, to make them more fantastic. But none of it is real. You’ll never get any house to look like that without expensive surgery.