buyer's remorse - noun - a feeling of regret experienced after making a purchase, usually one that is extravagant or unnecessary.
We have all heard of the above or have experienced it at one time or another. After all, we do live inside of capitalism, an "ism" dependent on buying and selling. But have you ever entered the Twilight Zone of seller's remorse? The feeling of unmitigated rue after selling something special? I think you have. I definitely have.
Case in point, a year ago this past April, I put my perfectly perfect (as opposed to imperfect) 2,000 square foot home in Jersey up for sale in a competitive market. I spent about thirty years and about 200K renovating, polishing, updating, enhancing (whatever). In short, I kept the home politically correct stylistically. Heck, I even created a perennial English garden out of what had looked like a pigsty when I moved in back in the late 1990s. Two days after publishing the listing, I sold my dreamy cottage for nearly 800K to two twenty-eight-year-old, newlywed New Yorkers who swore on their great-grandparents' graves that they loved the house as is and would never do the unthinkable: tear it down and build a McMansion, the current exasperatingly trendy trend (that is completely selfish).
And what do you think happened? After less than a year, my designer home is gone. The kids transmogrified the Cape into a cookie-cutter, center-hall colonial, unrecognizable to any of my former visitors, which only took about five months to do. Shocking. I don't even want to think about what happened to the garden. Ugh. Okay, I get it. They bought it, so they get to do what they want to it. Right? Fine. But is lying to get what you want the way to go? They could have told me the truth so that I didn't have to tell my neighbors–sick of listening to the cacophony of construction every time a house gets sold on the street–that I hand-picked buyers intent on preserving a 1930s relic with class, something the existing residents wanted to hear even though most of them had "renovated" their Capes as well. To them, I'm the liar, not the buyers. How was I to know these twenty-somethings would deceive me? Human nature is a bitch.
Seller's remorse, big time.
On the other hand, I chose to part ways with my Jersey roots, and now I have none that are discernible, a kick in the teeth to my sense of identity. I moved three thousand miles away into a time zone that gave me back three hours of my life. Everything about this place is far more livable than my old neighborhood. I'm the winner here. Even though it was disclosed that the land is basically a swamp, the naive pair from Brooklyn decided to buy it for a hefty price. My guess is that karma will kick in (because it always does eventually), and my seller's remorse will become their buyer's remorse. And all will be well, in balance, as it should be. Hahaha!
Just sayin'.
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