Behaviour When Waiting For Your New Home.

Back at the end of September I wrote a post entitled: “Behaviour When Shopping For A New Home”. The post was based on a then recent experience and was intended to shed some light on what was acceptable behaviour when you’re in someone else’s home. This is the second (and final) post based upon the same experience and deals with acceptable behaviour once you have made the deal on your new home, have removed all your Buyers’ conditions, and are awaiting possession of your new home.

Probably the most important thing to consider when waiting to take possession of your new home is ‘Do Not Disturb’. The people from whom you have purchased your new home still own it! That’s right — you have no business lurking around their home, no business knocking on their door, and certainly no business trying to gain entry to their home.

The people selling are not your friends (usually). The people selling are not looking after your home. It’s their home and they too have a million-and-one things to complete. They’re moving too, remember?

Sure it’s okay to drive by the home that will soon be yours. It’s even okay to go for a walk in your soon-to-be new neighbourhood. You’re excited; that’s normal. What’s not normal is stalking the current owners.

Under certain circumstances it may be acceptable to contact the sellers to seek permission to drop by — but you absolutely do not contact the sellers directly. Let’s say you just realized you forgot to take measurements for some new window coverings and you need the measurements to place an order. Now what? Contact your REALTOR® and ask him or her to contact the sellers’ REALTOR® to see if it would be okay to stop by and take measurements. If the sellers say ‘yes’ then have the two REALTORS® schedule an appointment for you and make sure you go with your REALTOR®.

Again, it should be common sense — especially if you’ve given it any thought at all.

///…CP