Southern Homes • Denham Springs, Louisiana
Selling in Denham Springs While Buying in Greenwell Springs: Two Houses, Seven Days & One Wild Ride
What happens when the sellers are also the buyers? Two houses, two inspections, two appraisals, high-school kids, work-from-home schedules and one growing blended family determined to get from Denham Springs to a 99-year-old home in Greenwell Springs.
There are stressful things in life.
Buying a house is one of them.
Selling a house is one of them.
And then there is buying and selling a house at the same time, which is apparently what happens when you decide one major life event simply isn’t enough.
These clients weren’t just my sellers.
They were my buyers, too.
And for a few weeks, the three of us were on what can only be described as a real-estate roller coaster—with two houses, two inspection periods, two appraisals, high-school kids, work-from-home schedules and one very determined mission:
Get this growing blended family from Denham Springs to the 99-year-old house they had fallen in love with in Greenwell Springs.
And reader, we did it.
But not before things got interesting.
First, We Had to Sell a Pretty Great House in Denham Springs
Their current home was tucked deep inside South Point subdivision in Denham Springs, Louisiana.
It was newer. It was efficient. It had solar panels.
And it sat at the end of a cul-de-sac on one of the larger lots in the neighborhood.
I love a cul-de-sac.
Maybe it’s the Southern woman in me, but there is something about reaching the end of a street and knowing nobody is driving past your house unless they have a reason to be there.
It feels tucked away without actually being tucked away.
South Point gave them the kind of suburban Livingston Parish living a lot of buyers are searching for: an established neighborhood, newer construction and convenient access back toward Baton Rouge.
And their house had something else increasingly worth talking about in South Louisiana:
Solar panels.
It was a cute, efficient home.
And here’s the important part of this story:
They weren’t leaving because it was a bad house.
They were leaving because sometimes a perfectly good house no longer fits the life you’re building.
Seven Days. That’s It.
Apparently, we weren’t the only ones who saw the appeal.
The house hit the market.
And seven days later, it was under contract.
The larger lot helped.
The cul-de-sac helped.
The solar panels helped us tell the story of an efficient Louisiana home.
And the house itself gave buyers something that made sense.
That is exactly what good real-estate marketing is supposed to do: figure out what makes this house different from the twelve other houses somebody just scrolled past and make sure the right buyer understands it.
And Then the Fun Really Started
Getting your house under contract in seven days sounds fabulous.
And it is.
Unless, of course, you also have to find somewhere to live.
Suddenly the clock was ticking.
My sellers were also buyers, which meant that while strangers were walking through their Denham Springs house deciding whether they could imagine living there, my clients were walking through other people’s houses trying to imagine the exact same thing.
All while working.
From home.
The home we were showing.
With kids in high school.
Because apparently we enjoy a challenge.
There were showing notifications and school schedules. There were houses to see while their own house was being shown. There were boxes appearing in rooms that simultaneously needed to look like nobody was preparing to move.
And then came the inspections.
Two Houses Means Two of Everything
When you’re selling one house while buying another, you get to experience real-estate anxiety from both sides of the table.
There was an inspection period for the Denham Springs house they were selling.
What did the buyers find? What would they ask for? What happens next?
Then there was an inspection period for the house they were buying.
Except this one wasn’t a newer DR Horton home.
It was 99 years old.
So while we’re waiting to hear what somebody’s inspector thinks about the house we’re leaving, we’re simultaneously waiting to hear what another inspector thinks about a house that has been standing since Calvin Coolidge was president.
Casual.
Then came the appraisals.
Two houses.
Two values.
Two waiting periods.
Two opportunities to stare at your phone as though checking it one more time will somehow make the appraisal report arrive faster.
For a few weeks, their entire life seemed divided between two addresses.
And somewhere in the middle of all of that, we were supposed to pack one version of their life and move it into the next one.
Which Brings Me to the House They Were Doing All of This For
After selling a newer, efficient suburban home in Denham Springs, they weren’t moving into something newer.
They weren’t looking for the next version of what they already had.
They were headed to Greenwell Springs.
And a house that had been around for 99 years.
Somewhere between two inspections, two appraisals, high-school schedules, showing notifications and enough cardboard boxes to open our own shipping department, I couldn’t help but wonder:
When we say we’re looking for our “next home,” are we really looking for another house—or are we looking for the next version of our life?
Because this growing blended family wasn’t choosing newer.
They were choosing the house that felt like where they wanted to grow next.
And sometimes that house is shiny and new.
Sometimes it’s 99 years old.
Then Came Closing Day
If buying and selling simultaneously is a roller coaster, closing day is apparently the part where somebody removes the seatbelt.
My sellers were trying to move out of their Denham Springs house.
Their buyers were ready to move in.
Meanwhile, the sellers of the Greenwell Springs house were trying to get themselves out so my clients could get themselves in.
There were back-to-back signings.
People were loading things.
People were unloading things.
Keys were changing hands.
Renters were becoming homeowners.
My sellers became buyers.
Another set of sellers handed over a house that had already seen nearly a century of Louisiana families come and go.
And somehow, amid all of it, one growing blended family made it from Denham Springs to Greenwell Springs in less than 30 days.
It was chaos.
But it was the good kind of chaos.
The kind that means everybody is going somewhere.
Maybe Moving Isn’t Always About Finding a Better House
I think sometimes we talk about real estate as though every move has to be an upgrade.
Bigger.
Newer.
More expensive.
More updated.
But maybe that’s not really what moving is about.
Maybe the better question is whether your house still fits your life.
This family left a cute, newer, energy-efficient home with solar panels on a fantastic lot in a popular Denham Springs neighborhood.
There was nothing wrong with it.
They had simply outgrown what it represented.
They were working from home.
Raising high-school kids.
Blending and growing a family.
Their next chapter didn’t need to look like the last one.
And apparently, it needed a house with about 99 years’ worth of stories already inside it.
The process of getting there?
Stressful.
The inspections? Stressful.
The appraisals? Stressful.
Closing day?
We won’t discuss my blood pressure.
But they made it.
Seven days on market. Less than 30 days to close. Two houses. One move. And a completely different version of home waiting on the other side.
Find Your Next Piece of the South
Search Homes for Sale in Livingston Parish
Maybe you’re searching for a home in Denham Springs. Maybe you want a big backyard, a cul-de-sac or an established neighborhood somewhere in Livingston Parish.
Or maybe you already own a home and the thought of trying to sell it while simultaneously buying the next one has you wondering how exactly people do this without developing a nervous twitch.
They do it with a plan.
And preferably with somebody beside them who understands that we’re not simply coordinating contracts.
We’re trying to get your actual life from one front door to another.
Follow us for more homes for sale in the South.
And if you’re thinking about buying and selling a home at the same time, send me a message. We’ll figure out the houses, the timing, the inspections, the appraisals and the closing tables.
You just start packing.
