Finally, the land settles. The Real Estate agents and the Lawyers take their money directly out of the sales fee before you even see it which saves you having to write a cheque out. Depending on which side of the fence you sit this may be a good thing as you can put all those sleepless nights and what seems endless negotiations behind you. What’s really depressing and makes you reach for the first stiff drink that you can find is the moment that the new bank balance [that looks like your hard work has actually paid off] suddenly gets blown to smithereens by the bank clearing out the mortgage and every other loan you ever took out by leveraging against your property in the first place.
If there’s a delay between the property settling and the lawyers telling your bank, you could withdraw all your money and book a flight to Mexico and sip margaritas on the beach watching the sun go down for the foreseeable future while the purchaser tries to find you (of course we don’t condone this behaviour but it’s something that lawyers can mess up on and as a seller leave you high and dry). Unfortunately, we were too slow and had to deal with a slightly less than depressing bank balance instead.
On a brighter note we can finally move on “literally” to pastures new. Reflect on what was but not too long because regardless if you had a good or bad experience with that property I bet you learnt something new, even if it was “not to make the same mistake again”.