RSSRealty Bites
October 23, 2009
kosmo - See all 763 of my articles
Today’s story, Realty Bites, should not be confused with the similarly named technology column, Reality Bytes.
My progress on the end-0f-quarter long story has stalled a bit, due to minor illnesses and a toddler who hasn’t been going to bed on time. Hoping to be finished by next Friday!
Realty Bites
Mark Salas sighed as the front door bell dinged. The Morgans could definitely count punctuality as one of their strong traits. Mark had hoped that perhaps just this one time the Morgans would forget about their appointment with him.
The Morgans were, ostensibly, in the market for a house. Mark had shown them nearly every house than anyone had put up for sale recently. At first, he had made an attempt to pick out the houses that seemed to be the best fit for them. However, over time, they had simply run out of houses that fit their criteria, and thus Mark had become less selective.
In the course of twenty seven months, the Morgans had made 107 trips to his office and Mark had shown them 304 houses. Mark really should have pawned them off on a junior associate long ago, but he had a soft spot for them. Mark wasn’t completely sure if they would ever buy a house, or if their hobby was house hunting. After a year of working with them, Mark had suggested that perhaps they might be interested in having a house built to their specifications.
“No, no”, they had exclaimed. “That would take far too long.”
Mark perked up a bit when the Morgans entered his office. Kari Morgan had brought him a plate of her world famous chocolate chip cookies. Mark had a Cookie Monster mentality when it came to Kari’s cookies – “Cookie! Cookie! Me want cookie!”
The trio headed to the parking lot and jumped into Mark’s Explorer. Mark was going to show the Morgans three houses today. The houses were just a few minutes from each other, so at least they could knock them out fairly quickly and Mark could return to work and focus more of his energies on customers who actually bought and sold houses.
Like many before it, the visit to the first house started out very well. Kari Morgan loved the stainless steel appliances in the kitchen, and Scott Morgan liked the fact that the lower level had a large bonus room that could easily be turned into a workshop for his woodworking.
The house had a large master bedroom, and the attached master bath had a whirlpool tub. Kari Morgan’s face lit up when she saw the whirlpool tub. The large walk-in closet and his-and-hers sinks added to the allure of the master suite.
They walked through the rest of the house, and the Morgan seemed to be finding a lot of positives in the house. They liked nearly everything about the house. The large windows allowed a generous amount of sunlight into the house, the three stall garage left plenty of room for a lawn mower and gardening supplies, and the large backyard had plenty of room for gardening. Scott Morgan was even pleased with the variety of birds that were attracted by the trees in the neighborhood.
Unfortunately, Mark had been down this path before.
“So,” he asked, cautiously. “What do you think.”
“We like it,” replied Kari.
“But?”
“No buts,” said Scott. “We’ll take it. Let’s go back to your office and draft an offer right away.”
Mark had to make a concerted effort to refrain from pumping his fist in celebration. He had managed to find a house that the Morgans wanted to buy! He was actually going to make a commission on the people that his co-workers mockingly referred to as “The Impossibles”. To say that he was on cloud nine was an understatement. This cloud definitely went up to eleven.
“We’ll want you to sell our old house, of course,” said Kari. “We’d like to get $300,000 for it. We think you’re just the man to get us top dollar.”
In that short moment, Mark dropped down to at least cloud four or five. He was facing the unpleasant tasks of convincing the Morgans that their own house was worth, at best, 75% of their asking price.