As much as I wanted to be at office earlier than normal this morning, I just didn’t want to get up when the alarm went off, so back to sleep I went for another hour. I’m beginning to think this need for extra sleep, is being triggered by our change of seasons. As we all know, changes in digs, locations, daylight hours and weather patterns, can often go un-noticed unless one starts paying closer attention.
It didn’t surprise me when seeing a spurt of activity on my new listing over at 315 Parkridge Dr., and as of now, there’ve been two showings on it and both buyers are now debating on whether to make an offer on it. I personally had a showing on it mid-afternoon which also went well, so we’ll see if I get a call from the buyer tomorrow.
My mid-morning appointment was to pick up the key to a home I’ll be getting listed soon, which is in need of a little touch-up painting which I’ll be getting taken care of by a qualified painter. I’ve definitely noticed since the pandemic arrived, how much more picky buyers have become over some of the silliest little things, yet they overlook those questionable big ticket items which soon become looming financial headaches, and believe me, I’ve been watching some of those lipsticked pigs some of my competitors sold to unwary buyers. There’s no question we’ll be seeing foreclosure notices posted on some of them. Remember that old saying, ‘Little in, creates an easy out.”, which pertains to buyers who purchase either a home or car with little or no downpayment, and the first time they hit a few financial bumps in their roads, they freely and willing drop off their keys at their banks while mentally washing their hands of it all. Unfortunately our financial institutions are making it too easy for them to get their credit re-established, just so they can head right back down those same roads to financial ruin.
Way back when I first started selling real estate, the minimum downpayment needed for a conventional loan was twenty percent, and the only other route for buyers who didn’t have that much coin, would be to get approved for an FHA or Rural Development loan, and if they were Veterans, they’d qualify for no-downpayment VA loans. The big difference now with the VA and FHA loans, is that they’re not as strict as they used to be as far as the overall condition of the homes they were lending on, so in these times, more buyers are getting VA and FHA loans on homes which wouldn’t have passed their inspection in years gone by. Yes, I’ve had a number of jaw-drops when seeing various questionable homes reported as being financed by FHA or VA. Yes, there’ll be some government-backed loan foreclosures also hitting the boards of various courthouses.
It would be very interesting to find out the rest of the story regarding all these VA financed acreages which are selling for big bucks, because the percentage of VA financed acreages has definitely spiked since the pandemic, and what’s really interesting, is most of those VA buyers, have never lived in the country. I’m sure many of them have already experience the down-sides of living on acreages where all well and septic problems, are theirs and theirs alone. For years I’ve cautioned acreage buyers to make sure they have enough cash reserves to handle such problems.
I’ll be making watermelon deliveries in the morning to various groups of people, and only because I’ve been having a bumper crop of them. In spite of my having a good helping of watermelon for lunch every day, It would take me many weeks to consume what I’ve picked.
This year’s carrots are so delicious, I make sure to have a helping of them with every evening meal. For sure I’ll be ordering more seeds from the seed house I got them from because they truly are the best of the best. If that old saying be true about carrots being good for your eyes, I’m now wondering how much better my eyesight will be since I was just recently tested as having better than 20/20 vision. Perhaps I can nickname myself as ‘Eagle-eye Joe’. Unfortunately, I already notice far more than I care to, so perhaps I’ll have to put some blinders on, just so I don’t have to endure seeing such stuff. I’m still of the belief that it’s far better to be on the naive side, rather than fully jaded.
While buttoning up a window over at a client’s building this morning, I discovered a feral cat living under a stairway, and when I looked closer, it definitely had quite the ‘nest’ built. Truthfully, I wouldn’t mind having it as my exterior office kitty, but we all know it’s very hard to domestic those ‘wildies’. Its coloring reminds me of an outside cat I had which lived well over 22 years which I named ‘Echo’. She arrived at my doorstep one stormy night, and for whatever reason, took an intense liking to me to the point where she would only let others pet her, but if you picked her up, she’d start burying her claws, but with me, she’d always want to picked up and held. There’d actually be times whenafter I’d pull into my garage during the winter, she’d start crawling up my winter coat and end up on my shoulders. Yes, I shed a few tears after she died. I’ll have to see if I can tame that ‘under the stairway’ kitty, and name her ‘Echo’.
As of this afternoon, it looks like we’ll be closing on my Dows acreage this Friday, so hopefully from now until it’s closed, there’ll be no more hiccups with anyone one or thing on the buyers’ side. I was pleasantly surprised when reading its well test results where the nitrate and arsenic levels were markedly low, and only because as we all know, the biggest arsenic problem we have, is a wide band which runs from north to south starting in northern Minnesota and ending somewhere in Texas. After seeing those results, I’d say that band must have pockets that aren’t as heavily contaminated. Having gone thru this whole process with a Des Moines agent and closing company, I can truthfully say they definitely do things differently than up here in Northern Iowa.
Tonight’s One-liner is: A witty writer is like a porcupine; his quill makes no distinction between friend and foe.
