When we sold our house in Alameda we had already moved to a temporary apartment on the East Coast. I hired the best real estate agent in town and it was worth it. We invested $40,000 in suggested improvements and I’m convinced they resulted in at least an extra $100k in sale price. We had 17 offers in two days and made out like bandits. Moving first made it a lot easier. People making offers wrote “pick me" letters. We refused to read them. We weren’t about to let people who stalked us on Facebook soften us up with hot button lures. We were emotionally distant enough at that point to not care who bought it as long as they offered the most money and were capable of coming up with it. It wasn’t home anymore. The staging made it look totally different from when we lived there.