Selling? Get ready for some vendor anxiety, says Isabel Morton

THE PHOTOS have been taken, the brochures are printed and the sign is up. It's been four years since I sold a property and things have changed. Back then everything sold within a few weeks and at a price that always exceeded the guide. Nowadays, the preparation is the same but the process is likely to take longer, and it can take its toll.

If you look on selling a house as a job, then it gets easier. The drill goes something like this: stumbling around the flower market at 5.30am with colour cards and fabric swatches, you have managed to find blooms to co-ordinate with every room. After hours displaying them in borrowed vases, and having awoken at cock crow, you fall asleep on your freshly ironed bedlinen, amongst your artistically displayed scattering of fresh rose petals.

Your children now spend every night in sleeping bags on the sittingroom floor and their bedrooms no longer resemble the poster-covered, fleapits which were once their teenage havens. Any contentious items such as glamour model calendars, suspicious looking potted plants, ouija boards, lifelike plastic firearms and your son's collection of fake ID cards, have been removed. Indeed, it came as a shock to realise how little you knew about your children prior to sorting out their bedrooms.

Bathroom cupboards are cleared of items which might suggest that your family suffers from head lice, piles, diarrhoea, ulcers, excessive snoring, worms, constipation and an active and varied private life.

Book shelves are edited of anything that doesn't fit into the arty/intellectual category and all private paperwork (pay slips, bills and mortgage details) are locked away.

Your fridge resembles a display case in Harrods food hall but your family are not permitted to even look at its contents, let alone indulge.

You have become paranoid about "your public" and the fact that they may be analysing every aspect of your private life. Dirty laundry is put into a plastic bag and removed to your sister's house for washing. No one can have a shower or bath outside the pre-scheduled times, and use of the fluffy fresh new white towels is punishable with death. You have not slept properly for weeks and your eyes now have a manic look. But, on the plus side, you have dropped two dress sizes and suspect that you may be in love with the estate agent.

You position yourself in your neighbours front bedroom window, where through binoculars, you scrutinise every viewer going in to your home. She obliges, and even agrees to take notes on car registration plates and second time viewers. She does, however, offer you little pink pills and suggests that you may be in need of a holiday.

Your estate agent reports high viewing figures and great interest in your house. Which is all very fine and dandy, but the idea is that it sells - this side of Christmas if at all possible.

The excitement and hopeful expectation of the first few weeks' viewings has begun to wane. You talk over every possible angle of the sales campaign with the agent, speculate about potential purchasers and whether they might be serious contenders.

After four weeks of "on view" living, your dog has become so comfortable in your mother's house that he hides when you visit,and you can't quite remember the last time you saw your husband.

The agent's list of potential purchasers has dwindled. One bought something else, another can't raise the finance and a third has decided that they need somewhere larger after all. One by one, as they are struck off the list, your hope begins to fade.

By week five, you crack. The family rather reluctantly move back home. The dog goes into a depression and has taken to relieving himself in the centre of your lawn.

Expensive lilies have been replaced with a bunch or two of supermarket carnations. The towels have turned grey. The kids have bluetacked their posters back on the walls and the "for sale" sign is looking a little battered and bruised, a bit like yourself.

The agent drums up a new batch of potential purchasers and a few private viewings are arranged. You admire their renewed enthusiasm but fail to share it.

Just as you are getting to the point of not even bothering to make the beds and wash the dirty dishes before a viewing, you receive an offer. Not quite the asking price but not far below. Within days you have a higher offer from someone else. Things are looking good. Or are they? You will miss the buzz and excitement of it all. Having done it once, you would happily go through the stress of it all again.