While doing a little tidying up around the front office early this morning and watering my plants in the front window, I noticed how the flowering plants are beginning to grow now that our days are getting longer. Someone was at my office about a week ago and while walking out she said, “Wow! What beautiful plants you have blooming!” I smiled and said, “For some unexplainable reason, they really like growing in my front window.” I went on to say how our office has had plants in windows at three different locations over these past 25 years and the present window is far better suited for growing flowers and plants year round. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with my 10 year old avocado tree which is getting a bit too tall for my window. If it were growing in Florida or Southern California, it would be old enough to start having avocados on it, but the requirement of temperature and needing another avocado to pollinate it, says there’ll be no avocados unless I can find a way to ship it to either of those States to someone who’s got a place to plant it and take good care of it. I’m sure many of the gardeners are already planning their Spring gardens now and ordering seeds from the seed houses. I haven’t yet heard any predictions about our growing season here in North Iowa. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’ll be another bumper crop of corn and beans which will continue to keep the prices per bushel down. If those prices continue to be down in the coming years, I’m afraid there’ll be some farmers in dire financial straits.
Today I had my first showing at 233 – 7th St. NW to a young couple who’ve fallen in great like with it. It doesn’t surprise me a bit knowing the shortage there is for move-in condition two stories with four bedrooms. They were also surprised at the room sizes and kiddingly I said to them, “Since I’ve been doing this job before the trees arrived which makes me greatly jaded, I was “wowed” the first time I walked into this home which tells me everyone else will be pleasantly pleased with what they find here.” I’m going to place a bet with myself that it’ll be sold before the early Spring blossoms arrive. I could truly see myself living in that home with all the space and qualities it offers. Likely many think I’m just trying to rev up the interest in it, but certainly not. It’s a great home that’ll sell itself on it’s own merits—I’ll simply be the order taker.
A long over-due closing is to take place tomorrow morning on one of my listings and I’m going to continue being in hopes there’ll be yet another soft landing for both the buyers and sellers. It’s been a bit rocky from the beginning and I’ve come to the conclusion that whenever there are more parties involved in a transaction, the more delays there’ll be—especially when working with out-of-town mortgage companies. Long gone are the days when we used to get local loan approvals in less than a week and only having to wait for the appraisal and title work to be completed. Perhaps this is why cash sales are my favorite, and believe me, there’ve been a great number of them these recent years. I think many of the older buyers have decided they might as well pay cash instead of having their money in banks drawing super low interest rates and growing moldy. As the old saying goes, “In the land of the blind, the one eye is king.” My tweaked version goes, “In the land of credit, those with cash remain king.”
