After much fretting and worry about last day documents to arrive, I can say with a pleasure that both of my closings today had soft landings with the exception of a slight mis-understanding that was quickly resolved. Orchestrating back to back closings can be a bit daunting at times especially when there are other agents involved. When there are communications that are not clearly relayed to all interested parties and approaching the end of the transactions, I find that not everyone is on the same page. Too much talking and not enough listening give cause for undue anxieties. I’m just glad things fell into place and everyone is happy.
I received a call today from someone who had me go out to a home they own several weeks ago to give them an idea of pricing. At the time, the owner was gone and left the door unlocked for me to inspect it, and after walking out, I was very glad that I was alone as I would have likely made some not so pleasant comments regarding the attempted upgrading that was made. The message that was left for me today was informing me that it was going to be listed with another Realtor. I looked up to the ceiling after playing that message and said, “Thank heaven!” I could go on about the excessive amount of inferior work I encountered in the home at the time, but I’ll simply say, “Whomever the workers the owner hired to make those improvements should have been fired after their first day’s work. You absolutely cannot turn a sow’s ear into a silk purse when it comes to home improvements. Either the home has good bones and a standard floor plan, or it doesn’t. I’m not even considering neighborhood when saying this because there will always be people purchasing homes in neighborhoods that others would steer away from.
If when starting from the basement floor and working your way up to the top of the roof and you find major structural problems, it’s time to leave. If when walking through a home from main floor to the second floor if it has one, and you find dysfunction in the layout of the floor plan that would cost thousands of dollars to get it re-designed, then it’s again time to move on. For example, I showed a home not long ago that was all glitzy with the staging of furniture and cutesy wall hangings, but what was wrong in a grand way was the floor plan. The only bathroom in that two story home was in a corner room on the main floor and all the bedrooms were upstairs. Now consider this. If you awaken in the night and realize you have to visit the water closet, you’d have to leave the bedroom, take a long narrow flight of stairs to the main floor and walk through three rooms to get to where you need to go and hopefully in time.
If you want to get ready for bed, you make two trips up and down the stairs before you could rest your head on a pillow. The target buyer for that home would be an exercise fanatic. They might as well sell their stair-stepper and treadmill knowing how much extra walking they’d be doing in it. As I was showing the buyer the home, I was also pointing out how poor the quality of workmanship was in nearly every room. Just as we were walking out I said, “That floor plan and decorating was a little on the funky side wouldn’t you say?” His quick response was, “You’re being kind because I saw it as being all funked up!” I think his response was more close to the truth.
