Ishould know by now, if you venture into an exploratory hypothetical conversation with a real estate broker, you might as well start packing. One casual conversation with a broker friend started the house hurricane.

My neighbor had just sold his house for a tidy sum. That got me running the numbers on the Happier Yellow House. Who doesn’t do this? In the seven years since we bought it — and greatly improved it (in my humble opinion) — the home’s value had increased nicely.

So, I asked Wendy, our broker friend, out of curiosity, what she thought we could get. She gave me a number that even after broker’s fees would be hard to pass up. Still, the thought of listing my house, finding a new place and moving sounded more painful than surgery without anesthesia. I talked it over with my husban

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