Dear “Delusional” in Dallas …

Wall Street Journal “Cheapskate” Neal Templin writes today about trying to ditch his Dallas house in a down market, in advance of his family’s relocation to the East Coast. In short, a house that went on the market in February for nearly half a mil didn’t get a single nibble till four months later, by which point the offer was $102,000 lower than Templin and his wife’s initial asking price. Templin, moving to NYC to assume the paper’s personal-finance editor position, put at risk his own personal finances in order to sell the “1937 brick-and-stone house … in a pretty neighborhood of older homes and towering trees about five miles from downtown Dallas”; he and the missus argued about plenty, including how much to spend on a touch-up to help move the joint (though, really, Designed to Sell never seems to spend more than $2,000). A cautionary tale. –Robert Wilonsky