And in a Flash, My Home Was Gone in 2025

Goodbye, 2025. Don’t let the door hit you in the rear.

My year of Real Estate Hell technically began last Thanksgiving with the passing of a beautiful friend, Vivian Young. She was a most perfect tenant. For 17 years, her rent checks were hand-delivered without fail by her assistant with a sweet note. Vivian founded Lady Primrose with Caroline Hunt, at The Crescent Hotel in Dallas, and ran it until its closure. That’s why Vivian had SO MANY antiques in her 1,700 square foot apartment, my mother’s former condo “behind the pink wall.” The estate sale was amazing. Sweet Vivian.

When those antiques were cleared out, we remodelled the condo. With new everything, we finished in mid January and were ready for a tenant.

Why I Love This Pink Wall Condo at The Seville: It Belonged to My Beloved Mother

Nada.

At the same time, my husband Walter and I wanted to downsize from our Preston Hollow home. In February, we approached the buyer of a home we had been circling in the gated community of Lake Forest about a mile from our Ricks home. I should say one of MANY homes we admired because as soon as we toured any home in Lake Forest, they were snatched up.

INCLUDING this one.

The Remorse Letter

You’ve heard of writing “the love letter” to home sellers? I wrote a “remorse letter” to the buyers. Asked if they had BUYER’s remorse. Turns out they planned to remodel and flip. You’ve got a bird in hand, I told them: let’s talk!

Contract negotiated and signed, we embarked on the remodel/finish out with the builder, Jim Mills and Christie Wilkins of Mills Custom Homes. They had not been on my (rather extensive) radar, but as I got to know (and research) Jim and his daughter, Christie, a Compass agent, I was not just impressed, I was delighted.

We had built our home more than 25 years ago with another great, off-the-radar builder with superb results: Jim Curtiss. Both Jims are the kind of rock-solid people you trust innately. And though I would have preferred to build new again with New Leaf Custom Homes, there was no dirt left in Lake Forest. The home we fancied had a great floor plan and mucho potential. We would be coming from a highly customized home and had the most unique — or weird-ass — needs.

We didn’t want much… only a tornado shelter, wine storage, and a spacious three-car garage — the husband would not look at anything smaller. We wanted a laundry room on the larger side, an outdoor shower, a dog bath, a dog space, enough room for two home offices, lots of storage, plus a couple of guest rooms.

Moving into Lake Forest meant I was giving up my acre lot and my pool. But Lake Forest has a community pool and a couple of nice dog parks for our Goldendoodle girls. And the beautiful treed neighborhood landscape evoked the aura of our now former property. In fact, the home even had two Live Oaks in the front yard!

With a little tweaking, and adding a LOT of beautiful stone on the inside to match the outside, Hill Forest filled about 95% of our list.

Stone, Skill, and Instinct: Meet Dallas Fabricator Delia Larralde

But I was totally unprepared for what came next: selling our homestead and moving.

First Home I’ve Sold in 25 Years: OH MY GOD

It was May, and still no tenant behind the Pink Wall. Pepper Square, Preston Royal, Lake Highlands, Kessler Commons: we are told ad nauseam that Dallas needs more housing. Yet here I had a most affordable, updated two-bedroom, two-bath remodeled condo all utilities paid, and no tenants.

I know that we find a lot of FUN homes here on CandysDirt.com and help agents in getting the word out to promote a listing. Promote = Market = Sell. We make it sound like one giant cocktail party of fun if you sell your home and buy another.

Now I know the truth! Selling your home is a beating: purging, cleaning, staging, fixing up, showing, and leaving the house to show. Those frustrating potential buyers who “kick you out,” then come over multiple times with a different crew in tow, but never make a single offer.

There was actually one buyer(s) I banned. Said “no more, not welcome back.”

I know that I have looked at homes a dozen times (only when unoccupied), but I always had serious intentions. I’m compulsive when it comes to real estate, and I respect that in any buyer. I offered potential buyers a cocktail hour to see the sunset, even an overnight stay. But there are buyers out there who apparently play a game called “let’s pretend we are rich and can buy an estate-style house when we really can’t.”

Then there was the old developer who said he had a cash buyer — like in dollar bills. This buyer was supposedly related to Coco Chanel, who had no children. He also went to Stanford, as did his daughter. Except Stanford had no record of either — I checked when things got really suspicious.

Over the next few weeks, I will take you through the process we experienced now that I am on the “other side” of the Silver Tsunami. Though here, I will be calling it the Blonde Tsunami. And we will be exploring this topic with panels of experts across the city with “The Downsizing Diaries.”

Fannie Mae projects 10.5 to 11.9 million older homeowners (65+) will leave or have left their homes from 2016 to 2026.

But…

More than 60% of Baby Boomers say they never plan to sell, and will age in place. I think they will change their minds, as we did, due to increased home ownership costs and inflation. It’s great if you own your home on a fixed income, but when utilities, taxes, and insurance start eating your lunch, time to say goodbye. Ninety percent of Boomer-owned homes won’t hit the market until the 2030s when we all croak, about the time the young iGens, Alphas and Betas are ready for a home. But oops! they aren’t all having families!

I could have lived in our Ricks home for the rest of my life, but I’m not sure what it would have become. As properties head down that path of functional obsolescence, you tend to not make as many investments in the infrastructure.

But, that pool…

I want my girl to get spiffed up and shine forever.

And of course, when the expert tells you it’s time to sell, you listen. We visited Richmond, Virginia in early October, and caught up with none other than Dave Perry-Miller himself. Dave had sold our previous home in 1999, which took FOUR YEARS. Four years might be a record, and Lord knows I’m not an easy client. “Candy, after four long years, did you really try to back out of the deal the night before closing?”

YES, I did.

Dave’s advice was to sell our beautiful home and pass her on to another vibrant life.

Which we did on October 24.

It’s going to be fun to write about my former house and her impending makeover by her new owners, readers of our site.

We moved out on November 15, actually on three separate days BEFORE November 15, but that was the final final. Oh My God, I would run for Dallas City Council five times before moving again. It is brutal. That clock is ticking and you are in constant movement of stuff to a box or bag, even while eating and talking on the phone.

The books! The generations of electronics!

And we had the BEST movers — Curtis Specialized Moving & Storage! (Not one thing broke.) We were wall-to-wall boxes in the new house, even though I purged for over a year! Seems I am a keeper of (silly) things. The only, only good thing about the brutality of moving is that you just finally go cold turkey and TOSS IT OUT.

(Ask Karen about Swedish Death Cleaning.)

I hope your real estate year has not been as dramatic as mine. But all this experience has fed more upcoming stories — how to purge, how to show, should you stage, how and when to get out of the house when you sell. Should you buy a house before you sell? (We did, found the best deal.) Do you need video? Drones? How to handle nuts and lookey-loos. Be prepared for the inspector beating and the new roof rip off: Texas insurers have buyers petrified they will not get insurance, so roofers are inspecting roofs and saying, no surprise, “This home needs a new roof.”

The last wardrobe box is out for pick-up; there are still boxes in my formals. But we are in our new home, out of the old. Not gonna lie, it’s an adjustment. But it is beautiful, comfortable, and we are cuddling the dogs who seem to love the dog park after being Queens of their own acre.

I think I may even have more space in my new closet! You know what that means…

And P.S. The condo was leased in July, thank you, Sanders Avery. Hallelujah!