Love's Real Stories

Answering all the real estate questions you never knew you had.

Category: Buyers

December 4, 2014

Fair Market Value

A little lady shot past me and down the hallway of my open house. She glared at me from time to time as she zoomed from room to room, muttering “heh!” and “bah!”

I caught up to the little lady in the back yard where she stood with fists on hips, scowling as if she were surveying a landscape so foul it could be the County dump.

“Just a regular old house,” she said, “and you’re charging a king’s ransom for it!”

The truth is, the house was a tad over-priced, but that was the seller’s idea, not mine.

“You Realtors keep raising the prices on these houses to where a regular person can’t even buy one!”

I heard the front door slam. I excused myself from the angry little lady, and went back in the house, where I came upon my mentor, the wise and wily KDV.

“Hey, babe,” said KDV, “just checking up your open house. What’s shakin’, grasshopper?”

I told him a lady accused me of raising home prices. I neglected to tell him she was still here at the house.

“Absurd!” said KDV. “Home prices fluctuate with Fair Market Value, and Fair Market Value is like the Mississippi River. Its level rises and falls in response to forces beyond our control, my friend.”

The little lady skittered in and stood behind KDV, unseen by him, with her fists on her hips, scowling. I nodded toward her surreptitiously in an attempt to clue KDV in, but he raged on, unaware of her presence.

“Whoever suggests we as Realtors have such power is simply uninformed. Here, let me wave my magic wand!” he said sarcastically and rhetorically, “Where would you like the price to be today?”

“Show me this person who says Realtors are the cause of rising Real Estate prices, and I will show you someone who sounds like an ignoramus!”

The little lady stomped around from behind KDV. Caught off-guard, he hopped a foot in the air. She stuck her finger in his face and screeched, “You’re a nincompoop!”

She shot back out the front door, muttering.

KDV said, “Oops. That’s the lady you told me about, right?”

“The very one,” I said. His shoulders sagged.

“Rule number 4507, grasshopper: ‘Never shoot your mouth off.’

“Anyway, babe,” he said, “that lady is wrong about Fair Market Value. But she’s right about one thing.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I’m a nincompoop.”

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November 21, 2014

Un-selling

I was driving along, honing my skills as a lively and interesting conversationalist, when to my utter amazement, tears shot from the eyes of my passenger, Kathy Grisham.

“No, no, no, no,” she sobbed into her hands.

“Uh,” I said. I recalled in that moment the words of my mentor, the wily and wise KDV: “There’s more to this real estate stuff than showing houses and writing contracts, babe.”

“It’s all wrong!” Kathy bellowed. “My husband won’t listen to me! The house he wants us to buy, it’s all wrong, all wrong. It needs too much work and costs too much. And I’m about to have a baby! Do you understand?” She wrung tears from her handkerchief like a soaked washrag.

I understood the part about having a baby. The rest I was foggy on. Kathy and her husband Brad were excited about buying this house as far as I knew, and I was excited about making a sale.

Now she was yelling. “He’s a dreamer! Always biting off more than he can chew, always getting in over his head!”

When she said “getting in over his head” she whirled her handkerchief in circles over her head, and covered the inside of the car with showers of tears. “You’ve got to get me out of this,” she wailed.

I wiped the tears from my cheek, also my hair and right ear, and drove on to the house, where we met Brad.

“Honey!” said Brad, as we strolled room to room, “just wait till I refinish these hardwood floors, and patch this old plaster. The painting is no big deal, and some plumbing and electrical will get the kitchen and bathroom in shape in no time.” It took everything I had to not shout, “Here, Brad! Sign this tear-stained contract!”

But Kathy looked at me pleadingly. I silently said good-bye to my tear-stained contract.

“Uh, it’ll take a lot of money and time to do all that,” I said numbly, “are you sure you’re not getting in over your head, biting off more than you can chew?” I wanted to bite off and chew my tongue.

Brad saw the look of agreement on Kathy’s face. “Honey?” he said.

“You’ve been painting our apartment for two years,” she said. “I want some furniture besides paint cans, tarps and ladders.”

Back at the office I told KDV my sordid tale.

“Ah, yes!” said KDV. “The art of un-selling! You know, babe, there’s more to this real estate stuff than showing houses and writing contracts.”

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September 5, 2014

A Few Words

Mr. Williams, the seller of a country ranchette on the outskirts of town, pounced on my Buyer and me.

“Hey, how ya’ll doin’ come on in and have a look around I was just gettin the rider mower tuned up out there in the shop it’s a beauty the shop I mean but the mower’s a good little number too it runs like there’s no tomorrow and I use it for all kinds of stuff what with this place being so big and all and private too anyway like I was sayin that shop’s a beauty with 220 power and you-name-it because when we built this place it was a no-holds-barred kind of a deal as far as I was concerned you know when the contractor asked if I wanted this or that I said just make it the best and I’m talkin the whole Mary Ann not just the shop I’m talkin the house and everything like this open-beamed ceiling right here those aren’t toothpicks up there those are four-by-twelve laminated beams engineered for span all the way up to that ridge beam which is nineteen-and-a-half feet in the air from the floor we’re standing on so you from around here?”

Later, I asked my buyer, Mr. Lansing, how he liked the property. Mr. Lansing was a man a few words.

“Well, I have a few questions,” he said.

I called the Listing Agent. I was tempted to ask her how in the world she could ever manage to get a word in edgewise with her seller, but instead I told her my buyer had a few questions, and that we had met her seller, Mr. Will-

“Oh that’s wonderful,” she said, “and I’m glad you got to meet Mr. Williams who is just a great guy not to mention a wealth of information about the property which he is so proud of and rightfully so because it was built with such quality and oh my goodness I hope you got to meet Mrs. Williams just a sweetheart of a lady and the both of them are so nice and a pleasure to work with I just feel so fortunate to have them as clients and I know they’ll be conscientious sellers and there won’t be many repairs to negotiate because the place is so well-maintained and Mr. Williams is always willing to do whatever it takes to make things right like he’s already done all the extras I recommended for preparing for selling so what are your questions?”

Mr. Lansing bought that property without having too say much at all.

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June 27, 2014

Hot Time

Summertime heat in the North Valley can be vicious. Especially for people from the Bay Area accustomed to cool breezes by day and cold fog at night.

Jack and Mary Quince, a Bay Area couple, met me at my office one July morning to tour country property. The weatherman predicted temperatures of 105 to 108 degrees.

“Let’s go,” said John, “we have miles to go, right?”

We walked together toward my car in the parking lot and I noticed a station-wagon with a wire cage screening the open back window. A Golden Retriever stared anxiously at us through the mesh.

“That’s Rollie,” said Jack. “It’s okay if we leave him here, right?”

“Uhh…” I said.

A car zipped into the parking lot, made a snappy stop-and –reverse, and slipped backwards into the parking space next to my car.

My wily old mentor, KDV, popped out of the car.

“Morning, babe,” he said.

I made introductions and told KDV I was taking the Quinces out to see country properties.

“Ah. What fools these mortals be,” said KDV. “You do realize it will be so hot today the chickens will be laying hard-boiled eggs? It will be hotter than a two-dollar pistol, my friends.”

Jack and Mary laughed tentatively.

“But take heed!” said KDV. “After the sun goes down, my friends, it’s a midsummer night’s dream.”

KDV nodded toward the station wagon and asked Jack and Mary, “Is that your Retriever?”

Jack told him of the plan to leave Rollie.

“Only if you want to come back and find Rollie cooked like a rotisserie chicken,” said KDV. “In two hours that car will be hotter than Satan’s basement.”

“Let’s just take our car, then,” said Mary.

Four hours later we rolled back into the parking lot in the non-air-conditioned station wagon. The property tour was like a trip through a blast furnace. Jack and Mary sat slouched and wilted. Rollie was a limp rag. I said my good-byes and staggered off with no expectation of seeing them again.

Four days later, to my surprise, Jack and Mary bought a country property.

Forty days later, we closed the sale. I made an evening visit to their new place.

“It was a hot one today,” I said.

“Yes,” said Mary, “but tonight it’s a midsummer night’s dream.”

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June 19, 2014

Pros

My fixer-upper buyers, Brad, Bob, and Bill crawled over, under, around and through a 1920’s “handyman’s dream,” a two-story house they were in the process of buying. Today was inspection day, and as fate would have it, the hottest day of the year.

I leaned against a side fence in the shade, perspiring and panting after helping Bill raise his extension ladder to the attic access door up in the gable end of the weathered old house.

A voice from behind me said, “I hope those boys know what they’re doin’ buyin’ that old piece of junk.”

With effort, I turned around, wiped the sweat from my eyes, and looked over the fence to see a large man wearing cut-off jeans, work boots and a Caterpillar cap.

“Oh, they know what they’re doing. These guys are pros,” I said.

“Then they’ll know better than to turn the power on before they .…“ Blam! An electrical explosion that sounded like a lightning strike came from the direction of the garage at the back of the property. “…check for rusted fuses and loose electrical wires.”

Sparks shot from a frayed old electrical wire draped across the metal garage roof.

Bob ran out the back door yelling “Kill the juice! Kill the juice!” Bill poked his head out the attic access door like a turtle, with pink bits of insulation stuck in his hair. Brad ran around yelling “Where’s the power box? Where’s the power box?”

The big man in the Caterpillar cap appeared on the scene, striding purposefully to the sidewall of the fixer-upper. He calmly found the power box, and killed the juice.

“Pros, huh?” he muttered.

Three hours later, inspection day was ending. Bob, Brad, and Bill staggered out of the house dirty, streaked with sweat, and overheated.

“One last thing,” said Bob. He turned on the swamp cooler mounted on the front wall of the house. It vibrated and squealed and tumbled off the front wall of the house like a dropped safe. Its waterline snapped creating a great fountain arching over the front yard, cascading down like a waterfall.

The big man in the Caterpillar cap appeared again, rolling by in his pickup truck just in time to see Bob, Brad, Bill, and me whooping and jumping about in the spray shooting from the wall of the house. The big man slowly shook his head.

If I read his lips right, he muttered, “Pros, huh?”

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