Selling up during Covid-19

January 21st is my brother’s birthday, so it’s a date that sticks in my mind. January 21, 2020 sticks in my mind for another reason: It was the first positive Covid-19 case in Seattle, and indeed the USA. We naively thought they’d locked it down, chased his contacts and kept the wolf at bay. We were, of course, wrong.

We were getting ready to sell our house in January 2020. Excited that it was the first step on our journey to return to New Zealand, sad that it was the first step in moving away from our strong community ties. We loved living in our neighborhood, our friends were like family to us.

With all the upheaval over the past years in the US, I had wanted to put the house on the market as early as we could - even if it meant we rented for a while - I wanted the safely cash out of the house just in case something happened. I had the feeling of dread of being stuck, of not being able to sell the house and not being able to move. My anxiety ended up being a lucky break.

While the virus was moving silently through our city, we met with the Real Estate agent, sold crap on eBay, gave stuff away, painted, cleaned, gardened and got the windows washed. The home stager came in and made our house look like a magazine article and the photos were taken.

We put our house on the market on Thursday, 27 February, 2020. The first death in Seattle from Covid-19 was announced on 29 February while we were in the middle of two crazy days of open homes. Being a mid-century house, designed by a local professor of Architecture, we had hundreds through. This was before hand sanitizer and masks. When we moved out of the house for the two weeks of real estate preparation, marketing and sales, it was a normal world. When we moved back in to pack up and leave, school had shut down and I was disinfecting everything.

The house was like a treehouse, looking out at the Douglas Fir trees of Ravenna, Seattle