I’m not sure what’s going on with the real estate markets in some of the surrounding towns, but I can say there are homes for sale in them that are higher priced than what’s listed here in Mason City with similar features and neighborhoods. My take on this is there’s not been enough new construction due to material prices which in turn creates a bottleneck of step-up housing for those looking for newer and better. I can already see it happening here in Mason City and that’s all we can do is take a wait and see attitude and deal with it when it does become more fully evident. One of the old Realtors whom I befriended during my early years in the business, and remember him telling me of a time in years before when it started happening where there we few if any homes to sell which caused a number of salespeople to get out of the business. Some of those offices started selling insurance to help with their on-going monthly expenses. What’s making it even worse is the influx of people moving back here after retirement from large metro areas which are too fast paced for them when entering their golden years.
I can already sense it’s going to be a busy day for me tomorrow with the first of the month at hand and upcoming closings files to manage. I’m still stinging from a few inappropriate words from last week having come from an agent working out of another office. I’ve decided that if this person doesn’t have their “perfect” world of real estate, the lashing out begins. It’s impossible to be a winner all the time.
Over this past weekend I more fully understood my mother’s ways when going thru some of her most guarded items with my siblings. As close as I was to her, I never realized how many things of value she had in her possession. One of my sisters was even “wowed” by her ability to keep everything away from her curious children over those long years of living under one roof. I have absolutely no idea how she managed to keep such out of reach—especially when we were all in our young and explorative years. When I opened one box I said to myself, “How did you manage to keep these things away from me when I was the absolute most curious of your children?” I’ll never forget standing likely knee high to her at the kitchen sink asking my multitude of questions as well as our on-going debates over some of the simplest of answers she’d given me. For me it was always, “Why?” From asking, “Why do I have to go out into the barn at night and be the one to catch my favorite chickens on the roosts and you put them in those wooden crates and never see them again?” To one of worst questions asked that I cannot yet remember her answer which was, “Why do people and animals that I love die and where do they go?” Something was said to me today by one of my much older siblings that I’ll have another bittersweet memory of when that person said, “I’ll never understand how you spoke to our mother the way you did even as a child and she let you get away with it, but if any of the rest of us challenged her like you did, we’d get slapped.” Later I thought, “I think I was making my mother not only laugh but also question things she’d always considered to be those hard and fast ways you just don’t challenge.”
The above photo is of an indian head penny I discovered in her “private” stuff that she found while working in our vegetable gardens. I looked up its value and it’s worth at least $3.00. So whenever you walk away from a penny that’s either turned upside or down, reach down, pick it up, and put it in your pocket because it may be worth far more than face value to your future generations.
