Without prior notification, I was alerted today that the buyer of one of my listings wants to close weeks before it was scheduled. For heaven’s sake! You can bet I was racing to get all the closing numbers over to the bank along with alerting the seller that she’ll have to be available next week for signatures. As chance would have it, the appraisal just came in yesterday, and the opinion of title early this morning. Oh well, we must jump thru all the more hoops in order please.
I’m still waiting on a loan pre-approval on a home I have listed which a certain buyer is very interested in, but she wants to make sure she’s able to get financed before pulling the trigger on it which I fully appreciate. I do encourage all buyers I’m working with to get pre-approved, but there are always those who want to get their cart before the horse.
Part of my morning was spent preparing for my public open house over at Prairie Place on 1st this Sunday which will be from 1:00 – 3:00 pm. I’m looking for a good turn-out again, and hopefully there’ll be another ready, willing, and able buyer coming out of it. As I mentioned, there are only four 2 bedroom 2 bath units remaining to be sold. Yeah!
Thinking I was going to have a real estate free day tomorrow, I discovered otherwise after getting a call from a woman wanting to meet with me in the early afternoon, and then look at four homes she’s picked out. Since I’ve known her for some time, I couldn’t ask her to postpone her looking, so I agreed. So much for my free day, but that’s the nature of my business where you’re on call nearly every day of the week.
On another note, I had a very disturbing confrontation with one of those workers who think they know how to install pavers in our Downtown. It all started when I arrived back at my office and noticed they’d already in a very big hurry, placed all the new pavers out front. It only took one glance, and there I could see they’d not lined up the faux mortar joints with their corresponding rows. It wasn’t slightly noticeable, it was glaringly noticeable, along with there being pavers that were not level with the concrete sidewalk which would create trip-edges, and of course catch the blade of a snow shovel.
After looking at that mess, I picked up the phone and called one of the Street Dept. supervisors. He was there in about ten minutes and agreed that they were not correct. I also pointed out all the globs of tar Country Landscapes employees managed to dig out of the pavement joints.
It wasn’t ten minutes later, and while I was on the phone, one of those so-called employees of Country Landscapes walked into my office. When I hung up, he immediately challenged me on the issues I have with their work. Of course when I walked out and showed him their errors, he snapped back and said, “This City is full of mistakes.” He then turned and looked at my building and started verbally ripping it apart. I finally told him to stop harassing me because I was not going to back down from my statements regarding their inferior work which we are all paying for.
I then called the head of the Street Dept. who just happened to be on his way down for a look. Of course I had to listen to weak excuses, but he did tell me he’d get them to correct their errors in front of my building. He also mentioned there being other issues that have to be addressed with Country Landscapes.
Not long after he left, the Country Landscapes “boys” were blowing sand out of those paver joints, looking around, running water, and then appearing as if they were satisfied with doing nothing to correct their mistakes. Oh did I seethe when walking back out there and finding they’d done absolutely nothing.
I’m writing these lines tonight as proof of my conversations because I’m afraid that nearly block-long stretch of pavers which were poorly installed, and sorry to say, I would not doubt there being some falls taken on them by the general public, and yours truly will not be responsible.
I did mention to the City Street Superintendent that when you walk across the street and look at the near perfect work those Hispanics did several weeks ago, and then look at my side of the street, there’s a glaring difference. I even mention to the City that Country Landscapes should’ve kept those Hispanics working because they knew what they were doing.
Now don’t think me judgmental, because it didn’t take me but a minute or two to get a good idea regarding workmanship when looking at that group of men removing, pre-paring, and then installing the new ones. Too bad I didn’t have a video of it all.
Like I said just yesterday regarding our City being just another zip code on the map of the Midwest, and then seeing today’s butcher-job by a company based out of Ames, I’ve come to the belief in recent years that all those out-of-town companies, along with their workers who come to fulfill their contractual jobs, must think we’re all a bunch of country bumpkins. You can be sure after seeing their inferior work, and then listening to the sass coming out of the mouth of one of their employees having a Brooklyn accent, I will NEVER EVER recommend Country Landscapes to ANY HUMAN BEING.
Tonight’s one-liner is: Irregardless, we can only blame ourselves for our own mistakes and failures.
