There’s one particular sale file I’ve been working on for the past two weeks that’s just about got me fit to be tied. I’d say every year or two there’s at least one quirky transaction that becomes exceptionally stressful and time consuming, and it’s almost always with a listing of mine having been sold by another real estate agency. The most memorable recent toxic transaction was with an out-of-town brokerage, and believe me, I’ll never forget the name of that horrible buyer. I purposely saved a voice mail from that buyer just as a reminder of how downright cunningly evil some humans can be.
I got a good laugh out of a call today from a dear client of mine who rarely ever speaks ill of anyone. I’d nearly forgotten how funny it sounds whenever someone refers to another as “Bat shite crazy”. Without a doubt, I’d say it’s been a good number of years since hearing that out of the mouth of another. After my good laugh I couldn’t help but respond, “Yes, and there’s all the more of them flying around North Iowa.”
After placing a few calls today regarding the recent showings of Prairie Place on 1st, it sounds like there’s a great deal of interest building again. The current residents have been exceptionally helpful with getting the word out about how wonderful it is to live there. As I said before, I’m just hoping there’ll continue to be those good “fits” within their existing community.
The above photo is one I took of our rapidly deteriorating pavers that were recently installed which were a part of our Main Street Mason City project about 5 years ago. It makes me very upset to see them each year crumbling all the more to where there’s no question in my mind they’ll have to be replaced more sooner than later. And to think all those many thousands of dollars that we paid Country Landscape in Clear Lake to create something that was meant to last. Since the sidewalk out in front of my office was part of it, I was keen to watch Country Landscape’s process of installing them.
The first thing I noticed which seemed to fall on deaf ears was my mentioning how porous those pavers appeared to be. Knowing how our climate’s freezing and thawing can wreck havoc on porous aggregates, I questioned one of the workers about it, and he dismissed me with our favorite, “Don’t worry, it’ll be fine.” Well, take a long walk up one side of the street and back down the other of Federal Avenue here in our Downtown, and you’ll see for yourselves what freezing, thawing, and above all the use of snow melt has done to those pavers in less than five years. I have a great deal of cracking of them out front, but because I don’t use snow melt, they’re not as decomposed as they are outside other storefronts. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised of those pavers were manufactured in China.
Speaking of China, I”m exceptionally happy that our President is ratcheting up on his placing of tariffs on goods from China. Over these past months, I’ve been keen to look at everything I purchase, along with working all the harder at not buying “Made in China” products. China is growing all the more powerful due to their government’s push on building an empire. Whenever there’s a government controlled by one person who’s installed for life, becomes an opportunity it to State sponsor economic wars on other weaker sovereign nations. What we are now seeing, is China raising itself to its next level which is on the fast track of becoming a corporate monarchy which is now beginning to mirror Czar Putin’s circle of corporate oligarchs.
My one-liner for tonight which I find most appropriate is: “An elite is inevitable.”
