We first put our house on the market on Valentine's Day in February and had a good offer within weeks. Unfortunately the sale fell through and our estate agent slowly lost the plot, so we took our house off the market during winter and the World Cup and decided to put it on the market again in spring. Given that my last three encounters with estate agents had all been very unpleasant experiences, I wanted to make sure that we made the right choice this time around. So Ronnie and I decided to check out our options using the mats in the Knowing Field, as it is sometimes known.
The options I wrote down (and which I didn't reveal to Ronnie beforehand) were: Don't Sell the House; Use Our Last Estate Agent; Use New Estate Agent; and Use Private Property website - which we'd heard good reports about. Obviously we folded the papers and shuffled them so that we didn't know which option was under which mat and, because this was a decision which affected both of us, we took turns to stand on the mats and then wrote down what we each felt independently.
When we compared notes afterwards, we had both experienced very similar things: We felt wobbly and uncomfortable on the Don't Sell option; we both found it difficult to stand on the one which said Use Last Estate Agent; we felt okay on the Use New Estate Agent; but both felt the strongest and most comfortable on the Use Private Property option.
Now having facilitated and witnessed hundreds of Family Constellations there is no doubt in my mind that, with the right intention from client and facilitator, the Knowing Field is always accurate. I often tell my clients and students that they can "Trust the Field", and in fact I firmly believe that Trust is a vital component of this work. So I signed up with Private Property for R1000 and put some nice pictures and a flowery editorial about Earth Walk onto their site.
After two weeks there had been dozens of hits on the site, but no enquiries, and Ronnie and I started to second-guess the answer we had been given by the Field. It was starting to feel like we had been in Limbo for months and friends who, at the beginning of the year were saying things like, "We are really going to miss you!" were now starting to say, "When the hell are you guys going?" So we decided to give the new estate agent a call!
Yes, I know you probably know what’s coming, but stay and squirm with me one more time.
The estate agent, of course, insisted on a sole mandate which included any leads that might come through my listing on Private Property. So I signed the sole mandate! Kick! Kick!
It was two or three days after signing the mandate that I got an enquiry via Private Property, which I passed on to the new estate agent. Two quick private viewings that week and I received an offer to purchase at my bottom-line price - and our house was sold. And for that the estate agent will receive about R150 000. How is that for expensive schools fees?
Naturally I was intensely annoyed with myself, not so much for the sizeable amount of cash I now had to hand over, but more because I didn’t listen to the advise I so readily dispense to others, when I tell them to TRUST THE FIELD.
It’s not all bad of course, because there are always beautiful little gems tucked away in the dung of even the stinkiest lesson. The sale was a clean cash deal which will help it to go through quickly; we can start making firm plans after eight months in Limbo; a really appreciative woman will be living in and working from our beautiful former home; and a (hopefully) appreciative estate agent should be able to really spoil her family this Christmas!
