Somehow the day seemed to fly by with all my little “to do’s” I had on a list. Some of those chores entailed making sure those vacant listings of mine have their furnaces turned on and working properly. With the weather soon to be turning much colder, is creating more concern on my part. Most people have no idea how quickly a home’s water pipes can freeze when it gets well below freezing. Over these long years, I’ve seen some very costly damage occur when pipes freeze, and then when it warms up enough to thaw, there’s water spraying everywhere.
One of the reasons I refuse to have an ice maker on my refrigerator is knowing even the slightest leak in one of those small hoses can eventually water-log an entire first floor. I’m still convinced many of those plastic hoses and fittings are not strong enough to withstand a city’s water pressure over a long period of time. I’ll just continue using my old-fashioned ice cube trays.
Another one of my little jobs today was to change a light bulb at the bottom of a basement stairway on one of my listings. The bulb that was there was an energy-saving bulb which takes a long time to brighten. I didn’t think it wise to have a bulb like that at the bottom of a stairwell. When showing a home, one should always have instant light. Have you noticed how hard it is to find regular light bulbs that are more than 60 watts? We can thank our Government’s intervention on that. I fully understand saving energy, but there are situations when stronger lighting is necessary—especially when a home is listed for sale. You can’t expect someone to buy it if they can’t see what they’re buying.
A seller called me this afternoon to let me know he’s decided to not have his home for sale any longer. I’m sure he thought I’d be disappointed in hearing I’ll not be able to market his home any longer, when in fact I was relieved. The on-going communication problems with his tenants was enough to wear nearly anyone down. I’m sure his tenants think they’ve won and likely now smiling and laughing over the number of times they refused their house to be shown. I wish that whole landlord/tenant relationship well, and even more so if I’ll never see them darken my office door again.
I moved like greased lightening to get my sign out of that yard today, and when I pulled up, I noticed it laying flat and muddied on the ground. It must have been the last unspoken message to me from those “delightful” tenants. Without a second thought, I went and picked it up and placed it in my vehicle while quietly saying “Good Bye, and Good Riddance” to that prolonged drama. I’m certain I’ll be all the better for it tomorrow because knowing fully well, the universe has a way of setting wrongs aright.
While working at the front desk of my office and seeing the stream of non-touristy people walking up and down Federal Ave. in our Historic District this afternoon, I’m wondering if the big promoters of their proposed Mason City Renaissance project have special magic wands or genies in bottles to where they’ll be able to instantly change the most apparent socio/economic and meta-physical state of those many I happened to see walking past my office in just one hour’s time. I felt like a little fish looking out from the other side of the glass of my fish bowl. Believe me, it wasn’t a pretty.
