After nearly 2 months of discussions, we decided if this was meant to be, our home would sell and we would bank everything else on that. We called our realtor and spent the next 3 weeks preparing to put it on the market.

Listing our home was really the first major step in making this a reality.

The day had come. At that point, the only people who knew about our plans were our parents, a few select friends, and our realtor.

36 hours later, we were under contract.

It was real.

It all happened so fast, it still seems like a blur.

Once the house sold the inspection was scheduled and was quite the debacle. To say this process has led me to shout the words “I am never moving again” over and over is an understatement.

What do you get when you combine a real estate scam, a camera crew, and a narcissist trying to prove a point?  Our inspection day.

The day before our inspection another house went on the market just 2 blocks away from us in our subdivision. I saw the “for sale” sign as I went past it on my way home from work but didn’t give it a second thought. The next morning at the bus stop our neighbor told us the house had been priced so far under market value it was going to drive down all the comps in the neighborhood.

We had our inspection in a few hours and the appraisal the following week. Shit.

We called our realtor and all agreed it must have been entered into the system wrong as it was more than 6 figures under market value. Our realtor was going to call to check just to be sure.

When he called us back we couldn’t believe what we were hearing on the other end of the phone.

The house was indeed listed for that amount but not because the listing realtor intended to sell it for that price, he was doing a reality show “bait and switch” to prove a point. He planned to lure buyers to an open house scheduled for a few days later and upon arrival they would get a flyer of information listing a different price. A much higher price.

How is this possible? Is that even legal? We knew the demand of the housing market based on what we had just experienced a few weeks earlier. We knew there were families who had been looking for months and thought about the people who would see the listing and think they had found their dream home at a great deal, only to be fooled.

Illegal, apparently not. Unethical, hell yes!

Our realtor was upset. We were upset. We knew if it were us and we were scheduled to have an inspection just a few blocks away and saw a similar house go on sale, we would absolutely check it out.

That is precisely what our buyers did. We nearly lost them that day.

Their realtor had to explain to them it was a scam and that the listing realtor was seeking attention for a reality show. Likely story, right? I don’t know that I would believe it either – but it was real. It happened.

They took her advice and waited it out.

That Sunday, food trucks blocked the entire neighborhood. Camera crews lined the streets. People were in and out all day. By the next morning, the price on the house had increased substantially, far over what we had even listed our home at.

To watch the entire thing go down and know people were being scammed just down the street was disgusting. It takes a special type of asshole to do something like that to people.

After it was all said and done, the listing realtor wrote a gloating email to our realtor and several others who had questioned him on his behavior – patted himself on the back and justified his behavior.

Narcissism fueled by greed.

It wasn’t until that ordeal was done and the appraisal went through the following week that I allowed myself to believe this was really real.

We were moving.

I resigned from my position 2 weeks later, on my 40^th birthday.