BEACH NOTES ... October 12, 2011 ... Ocean City, New Jersey

Finishing Touches for the Property Closing ... from Ocean City, New Jersey

I live on an island at the Jersey Shore ... near the tip of New Jersey ... in a barrier island location called Ocean City, New Jersey. It's a smaller island with about a 4 mile by 9 mile area at its widest point ... but much more narrow in many parts of the island. We expand to about 100-150,000 population in the summer depending on the months of June, July, and August. And we move slowly down to about 10,000 (or even less with a winter element heading south to Florida) for the rest of the year. We have a shoulder season before and after the summer, but that is mostly a weekend experience.

So the population tends to be a number of locals and a lot of second home owners and far more absentee owners who rent their properties for part or all of the year. It's a much different market down here ... a lot of "hands-on" effort to assist owners, a solid summer rental market with every renter being a potential and future buyer, and most buyers starting out down here as "absentee landlords" who travel from 2-3 hours to their home base to as far away as Iowa, Arizona, and California. I was working with an American living in London, England this summer.

And what does this have to do with the above title ... well, I have a closing this Friday - a property that I have had listed for well over a year. So we locked it up a few weeks ago, but we had sill plate issues and an above ground oil tank that had to be removed from the crawl space which is where the real world has its cellars.

The good news was that it all came out quite well environmentally ... so it appears to be a solid closing. But the buyer wanted the property" broom-clean" with just the kitchen cabinets and appliances and the window treatments. And the problem was a lot of furniture plus a complete attic of everything. The Seller was able to arrange for an organization to pick up some of the good stuff to take out. But a lot of stuff remained. And the problem was that it became part of my job to arrange for it all to disappear.

I tried a few local guys, but no one really wanted to get it done in the two-week time frame that we had. So I used "1-800-Got-Junk" for the first time. They did a great job ... on time, very professional, etc. I was impressed. So I wrapped it all up by taking our second hand vacuum cleaner over to the house and did a darn good job with the 1930s, 3BR/1.5BA with a living room, dining room, and kitchen, gas heat and central air about a 2-3 minute walk to the beach and all on a 30x65 foot lot. I also carried the vacuum up to the attic and did a once over up there as well. That part of the job down here ... and I was finished by about 9AM this morning waiting for the fire inspection which is our city's inspection of the sale property before closing. By the way ... the buyer is from Texas.

So Ocean City is on the map ... with a lot of notice all over the country. And the sale figure was $468,000 after an original $520,000 contract because of the sill plate issues and the oil tank situation. Now this might not be a "real world" experience ... but then again, Ocean City, New Jersey isn't the real world. Hang in there!!!

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