What is your house worth?

Real estate appraisers look at many things when they appraise the value of your home. Size, quality of finish, materials used, number of rooms and comparable sales in your neighbourhood.  Realtors have other things they consider- mostly the market and what buyers are looking for.

 

Sellers have their own considerations, things they think about when they try to figure out what their house is worth. They know what they paid for it and they want a return on their investment. Surely it’s worth more now than when they bought it. It’s worth the labour they put into landscaping, the time-consuming effort of building up the claylike soil with years of compost, the time spent nurturing saplings as they grew into trees and seedlings turned into flowers. It’s worth the many dollars they put into upgrades. It’s worth the hours they spent on cleaning and maintenance. It’s worth the good taste they put into renovations.

But when you sell your own home, how can you put a value on it? How much is your dining room worth- the place where hundreds of family meals have been consumed, the place where your lively book club has shared thoughts deep and shallow, the room where your entire family has gathered for Christmas dinners, the room filled with candlelight, laughter and love?  

The basement bathroom with its mural of tropical fish, painted by your daughters after a trip to Central America? How much is your living room worth- the site where your local arts presenting group Stage North was born, where local NDP volunteers strategized, the site of so many get-togethers? Where your dogs sit on the window seat and bark at Roxy and Annie and any other dog or child that walks by?

How can you put a dollar figure on the family room where you sit every morning watching the birds your husband lovingly feeds? The back deck where you drink your cocktails every summer evening, in your once-bare back yard, now surrounded by an impressive forest of  trees? How do you evaluate your big basement with its long bar and cozy fireplace, home of your fabulous Christmas parties? The apple tree that has grown to produce enough apples to feed the neighbourhood? And what about that basement door, the one your teenagers snuck through after a night of partying? How much are those memories worth?

 

There is another element appraisers consider when evaluating a house- something they call “best possible use”. Best possible use means the best way for a property to be used. Maybe the little house your husband grew up in is better suited for its new location as a summer cottage on a Saskatchewan lake instead of its former spot on a residential Edmonton street. The 50s split level he grew up in- on “the biggest lot in the district” as his mother says- maybe the “best possible use” for that property is for it to be split into two like so many other lots, the house replaced with two modern two story homes. Maybe the best possible use for the elegant arts and crafts bungalow my dad grew up in West Point Grey was for it to be torn down and replaced with a pink stucco mansion.

 

The bottom line is your house is worth what someone is willing to pay for it and in our case that number was a lot lower than I expected. But when I think about it, maybe now the house needs to be put to its best possible use. It’s a family home now occupied by two people.  It has rooms that sit empty year after year. Maybe its best possible use is for it to once again be lived in by a family. A family with kids that can run in the yard and hammer out tunes on the piano and sit around the fireplace and grow up to sneak in and out of that basement door. A place where a new family can make their own memories.

 

So I will say goodbye to our house.

 

A house that has given me memories worth more than any dollar figure, memories I will take with me to my new house, wherever that may be.

 

And I say welcome to this house, new family. May its fires warm you. May you harvest the apples from its tree. May your rooms be perfumed with flowers from its garden. May you share many dinners with candlelight, laughter, and love. 

And please. If it's not too much to ask. Could you feed the birds? They are going to miss us.