I’m still working at getting a sale put together with several delightful buyers I’ve been working with on and off these past weeks. I’ve known them for a very long time, and I can say the both of them are about as honest and true to their word as a mid-summer’s day is long. Working with people of such caliber makes for me the whole buying or selling experience all the more rewarding. In spite of what we often see on a daily basis, honest and hard working people really do deserve the best.
A young couple with whom I’m somewhat familiar with mentioned several days ago that they purchased a home. Attempting to remain professional, I congratulated them along with asking where their new home is located. Curious me always has to know which home recently sold in our market. When they told me, I had to bite my tongue to keep from telling them a few things I personally know about some that live not but a stone’s throw away from their front entrance.
After they went on their merry way, I shook my head in wonderment while questioning in my mind how they think they’re going to be proud owners who’ll keep up their yard, make repairs and updates, and all the while keeping current on their high mortgage payments, taxes, and insurance. They’re too young, far too lazy, and certainly not capable of making even the smallest of repairs or improvements themselves without their end results being disastrous. I wish them well, along with the hope they’ll grow up really fast, and take a few filterless crash courses on what it takes to be a long-term homeowner.
Last week one of my clients who owns several rental properties mentioned that a long term “all thumbs” tenant of hers decided to run out an purchase a home, and likely because she’d upped his rent a little just so to compensate for recent improvements she’d made, along with increased taxes and insurance she’s been paying for years longer than I ever would have endured. After she told me which home he purchased, I was quick to look it up on my computer. When finding it, I found it to be a home I knew for sure going to need multiple repairs made more sooner than later.
While we were talking, I did a little math and estimated her ex-tenant’s monthly mortgage payment is at least $250.00 a month more than what he was paying her for rent for over a decade. I told her he’ll certainly have a crude awakening when something major breaks down and no longer having a landlord he can call to come running to his rescue. I did say to her, “I’m just glad I wasn’t the one that sold it to him, because from the sounds of it, he’s the type who blames everyone else except himself for the predicaments he alone has created.” I’m once again convinced that when some men who believe themselves to have been wrongly slighted, will blindly race head-first into raging fires. Can you smell their smoke?
I’m just glad I learned a very long time ago that it’s just a good business practice to get to know buyers enough so to give them sound real estate counsel before they jump headfirst into purchasing homes with those always hungry and near everlasting 25 or 30 year mortgages around their necks. Yes, I’ve lost a number of buyers over the years who believed I was just trying to keep them from getting the dream homes they wanted, but in reality, I was attempting to keep them from being served future foreclosure notices on houses they never should have even thought about purchasing. I think I hold Mason City’s and North Iowa’s record on the fewest number of buyers I’ve sold homes to over the years that lost their homes due to foreclosure. I will gratefully bow if someone would give me my red ribbon or trophy. Just kidding.
The above photo is one I managed to snap from my back alley of our exceptionally beautiful early morning sky before it quickly changed. Don’t you think there really are times when the early birds get the best photos?
