With having an early morning appointment out of town, I made sure to get to the office all the earlier so I could be on the road before most were even thinking about heading to work. It was an interesting drive, and since I’ve not been on I-35 during a weekday morning, I noticed how tastes have changed with vehicles, and especially the out-of- State drivers who were likely passing thru. For sure they all must have radar detectors because there were some major speeders flying past me.
I arrived a little early at my destination, and fortunately the sellers were already waiting for me. Today’s appointment was only a pre-listing visit where I was giving suggestions on what needed to be done prior to my listing their home. Pretty much all they’ve got to do, is get some painting, cleaning out, and organizing things they have in their home and garage.
Thank goodness they did listen and take notes on my suggestions instead of what a number of sellers do when I offer my opinions, which is the refusal to make few if any changes or improvements. Unfortunately, those sellers end up having their homes on the market longer, and end up taking less due to negative perceptions their homes had given prospective buyers. It’s all the learning curve.
My dear long-time friend who now lives out of State, called this morning just to ask how things have been going, and also to fill me in on what’s been happening on his side of the border. It’s unfortunate he moved away, because we used to have our once a month lunch dates which were always a delight.
I hadn’t realized until he told me that Southeast Minnesota has been having torrential rains and wicked storms since Spring arrived. As a matter of fact, the storm that almost missed us last Saturday, really pounded them with all the more rain they didn’t need. Thank goodness he and his family didn’t have to deal with seepage and sewer back-ups like many in his neighborhood had to endure.
We both agreed that this global climate change has definitely had a year-over-year effect on the upper Midwest. It seems every year there’s some near-catastrophic happing with our weather to where I think most of us are ready to head for shelter every time the wind comes up. I’m just glad they didn’t have it as bad as all the many others.
Now that Country Landscapes is moving closer to my office with the replacement of those defective pavers they themselves installed about seven years ago, it looks to me like it’s a repeat of the same event, only the pavers are a different color. I’m sure they took no responsibility for the defective ones they previously installed, and likely not make themselves accountable when the new ones start failing. When seeing such flub ups, causes me wonder if we’re all caught in some sort of time warp where our City continues to make the same mistakes over and over again.
After reading part of that silly article written in the Globe Gazette regarding Tuesday night’s City Council meeting, I couldn’t help making a mental note of the comment made by our exceptionally gifted Finance Director when asked about his opinion on that River City Renaissance project, and that went something like, “I’m not sure where the money will be coming from.”
Now keep in mind, a Finance Director of a given city is normally about the most non-political and un-biased person to talk to regarding a given city’s financial outlook. I personally worked for a number of years in accounting, and you can be sure I understood the concept of keeping accounts balanced. The reason I’ve always enjoyed accounting is that there are no gray areas because it’s all either black, white, or red.
As I’ve said before, I’m very much wanting the best for our City, but I’m more clearly noticing the wrongful pressuring being done by a small special interest group who’re hell- bent on getting what they want–irregardless of the end costs that’ll be levied against our average hard-working and rapidly diminishing middle class workers in Mason City.
My closing went well today with the exception of my seller not feeling well enough to travel to the bank to sign docs. Thank goodness a friend of hers called and asked if I would stop over to her house and have the necessary documents signed.
When I got there I could tell she wasn’t feeling well, so I busied myself with getting them signed and notarized. I visited a little with her and her friends, and then cleverly remarked before leaving, “Now you’ll make sure to tell all your friends that I even make house calls.” They got a good chuckle out of it, and did freely promise to pass my name on to anyone looking to buy or sell. Such sweet people.
The above photo is of a key that was for a front door Yale lockset which I thought worth sharing because never in my life have I seen a front door key that looked like that. I would say that key and the lock it went to, must be at least 100 years old. I humbly bow when saying, “In all my long years of selling homes in North Iowa, I’ve never seen a vintage key that looked anything like the one above.” And to think there were three of them.
Tonight’s one-liner is: A budget tells us what we can’t afford, yet it still doesn’t keep us from buying it.
