This is a true story. Enjoy! And, afterwards, let's discuss the benefits of an online presence even though you may not always be able to connect a purchase with a specific form of advertising.
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Sunday morning, August 13th, 2006 - My wife and I woke up early and were enjoying a cup of coffee on the 6x14 sq. ft. balcony of our condo. Our beautiful view - the backside of the building directly behind ours separated only by a small strip of sparsely forested land with run-off drainage snaking through it (I'd call it a creek, but that would be a gross overstatement). As we were sitting there talking and taking in what scenery was available to us, we both watched in disgust as one of the residents in the building across the way walked out onto their third floor deck and scraped the remnants of their breakfast plate out onto the ground. I had had enough! It wasn't like we lived in a slum or anything; in fact, we lived in one of the most affluent counties in the country. It was time to buy a real home.
We went into the office (we all know this is really the second bedroom) and sat down in front of the computer. Three bedroom two bath minimum with at least a half an acre and absolutely NO HOA! I hate other people telling me what I can and can't do on my own property.
Speaking of property, my wife always laughs at me every time I refer to my house as my property. I still love her though.
After four solid hours of searching every site we could find hosting RE listings in our area, we had our search narrowed down to three houses (yes - we are every realtors dream). Two of the three that we could find within our budget that fit the majority of our requirements were your everyday run of the mill suburban floor plans located in newer neighborhoods. Unfortunately with HOA's and neighbors whose houses you could almost touch if you reached out of your window far enough, these posibilities were quickly scratched off of our list. I just couldn't deal with a HOA.
This left us with one possibility, a home built before the signing of the Declaration of Independence - mid 1700's - I can't remember the exact year. My wife and I jumped in the car and drove by the house just to get a look. We really liked what we saw so we went home and called our Realtor and asked her to set up a viewing so that we could inspect the property. Two days later we met our realtor at the house, toured the property and decided that we were, in fact, interested in making an offer. Priced above our budget, we decided that we would offer as much as we could afford - which, I believe, was $30K below asking.
Our realtor called their agent and informed him via voicemail that she had a client who was interested in putting a serious offer in on the house. This so called ‘agent' never returned her call. Now, I do not know exactly what she did, but I know that she did everything within her means to get a hold of this guy. Four days later, still no response. That evening (Saturday the 19th), we learned that the house was now under contract with another buyer. Our agent shook the grapevine a little bit that evening and found out that the new buyer was also a client of the homes agent. Hmmm...very fishy if you ask me.
Our agent informed us that we should look for another home as, even though we had our hearts set on this historic home and with all of the problems that can come up during the inspection when trying to close on a historic home, that it was possible it would come back on the market. However, due to the shenanigans of the home's agent, our Realtor advised us that it was better to just move on.
Sunday morning, August 20th, 2006 - My wife and I spent another 4 hours searching the internet for the home of our dreams. Just as before, we were able to narrow our search down to one house. It was beautiful; it was within our budget, no HOA, half acre, smack in the middle of the county we have chosen for settling down. To my surprise, it had been on the market for just one day and today, they were willing to schedule a viewing that evening. We immediately called our Realtor and asked her to get us an appointment. She called us back - we had an appointment for 7:00 pm.
We went to the house, on sale as the result of a divorce. The female homeowner was there and our Realtor instantly hit it off with her as she had also recently been through a divorce. As we were touring the house, the homeowner, devistated over her pending divorce began to cry, our agent and my wife both consoled her. It was a touching moment for all of the women (My wife should have written this section as I do not have the ‘feelings' to fully describe the situation. Anyways, we toured the house, loved it and decided to put an offer in that day. Our offer was $1K above asking as a sign of good faith. You see, for the listing price as low as it was, there was a lot of traffic that day. We didn't want to lose the opportunity so we jumped on it.
The next day our agent called with the good news. The offer was accepted. We later learned from the homeowner herself that because of the kindness of both our realtor and my wife - that she was going to accept our offer even if there were others that offered more. All because she wanted to make sure that the home went to a nice young couple, and we seemed to be that couple as far as she was concerned.
Just a note: The first house we wanted to offer on had its contract fall through about two weeks later. All of the sudden - that agent was interested in answering his voicemail. Did we still want to offer? Did we want to visit the property again? Could he answer any questions for us?
We had one thing to say to him: Kick Rocks!
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OK, so there are a few more morals to this story than I saw when I originally decided to write on this topic.
1.) A strong internet presence with regard to RE listings / advertising will likely assist a Realtor in closing deals - and you may never even be able to sufficiently link the sale to a specific site or listing service provider. However, you will find that if you ask your client how they found out about a listing, many times they will tell you that they found it ‘surfing the internet'.
2.) Always be nice to others when they are vulnerable. It will give you good Karma. And we all need good Karma.
3.) As a Realtor, you should always be available and willing to communicate with clients and potential clients as well as requests from other Realtors. When you are only in it to serve your self interests, others can see that, and will eventually come to the same conclusion that we did about the agent for the historic house: Kick Rocks!
Thanks for reading my Blog and your interest in me.
Best Regards,
Neil E. Broten
As always - don't forget to list all of your listings with me on www.Ubadoo.com.
See my profile for more detailed information: http://activerain.com/realestate_marketing_advertising
neil@ubadoo.com
