Hopefully today was the last of the extended cold spell that arrived about a week ago, and will be even better if it’s the last for this winter. When out placing open house signs before dawn this morning wasn’t what I considered a treat. With the snowbanks being coated with ice made it all the more treacherous when trying to get them to stand.
While on my way to work, I thought I’d be actively looking for something to do this morning. That thought was dispelled shortly after arriving when seeing emails to answered and phone calls coming in from clients and customers. The time managed to quickly slip by to where I couldn’t believe it was almost noon when I glanced at the clock.
As I’ve mentioned before, Realtors have more “back room” research to do than most would ever believe. There’s always that keeping up with the movements of prices as well as what’s getting listed for sale, along with what recently sold. Over this past month I’ve noticed a few exceptionally wide ranges of “listing to sale price” sales. Every time I see such, I always wonder who the buyer was, and what precipitated such a drastic drop in sale price by the seller.
The bottom-feeding, get-rich-quick-buyers are still alive and well in our market. I recently walked through a home that was sold to an innocent buyer who unknowingly paid many thousands more for a home than if it had been listed on the open market. What I don’t understand, is how sellers like that can sleep nights knowing full well they took great financial advantage of someone. Another home I was familiar with ended up selling far less than it should have simply due to an agent not being fully aware of what the home should have been priced at it in the beginning. It was starting to grow cobwebs when it finally sold markedly below what it should have. There’s no question in my mind, that particular seller now has a very bad taste in her mouth regarding the process of selling a home. I jokingly said to someone today, “I’ve discovered all the scoundrels in this world share the same shoe size.”
To my surprise, my public open house today at 39 Mission Drive was a great success. It sounds like there’ll be an offer coming in on it tomorrow. Now that we’ve reduced the price, I can’t imagine anyone not falling in love with it’s high dollar kitchen. I told many, the size and quality of that kitchen is something you’d normally find in the $250K range. And as we all know, kitchens are where most seem to congregate.
While watching a young gentleman in search of bank account information on his cell phone, I was again reminded how we’re becoming far too dependent on paperless. I blame all the banks, the utility companies, and commerce in general for encouraging it for one reason only—to save money on paper and postage. I couldn’t keep still as I watched him and finally blurted, “What will you do if suddenly some mega-hacking takes place in our “cloud” and you find yourself informationless?” I got quite the dismissive expression as his answer.
After reading what some of the totalitarian regimes are trying to do to these United States, it’s far more a possibility than most ever would have dreamed. At least try to keep your critical information in paper form so to protect yourselves against the “what ifs”.
