Tag Archives: realtor

The virtue of realtors…

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This morning I got to experience the real value of working with a real estate agent. It’s not so much that they are board certified professionals who spend every day facilitating technical sales with dozens of moving parts and a propensity to run into trouble at every step of the process. What makes the realtor so valuable than any of that, however, is they allow the buyers and sellers to stay at arms length through almost the entire transaction. For most people real estate is the single largest purchase they’ll ever personally experience. Throw in the emotional dimension of a place called “home” and the whole thing is fraught with issues.

I’m bringing this up because I went by my house-in-waiting this morning to get some measurements, look at a bit of furniture the sellers are interested in being rid of, and to make sure the truck actually fits into the garage (Yeah, that’s actually a thing with a large truck and a standard size garage). Unlike the other showings and the inspection the seller was there. So was his son. So was his daughter-in-law. They all seem like nice enough people – the son and his wife apparently live a couple of streets over so we’re even quasi-neighbors. Despite that, I’m still the guy who chiseled them down to a rock bottom price and then presented a longish, but reasonable, list of repair requests on a house, their home, that the seller and his departed wife designed for themselves from the basement up. But there we all were standing in their living room (that in about three weeks will be my living room) making small talk while I made snap decisions about their furniture and then wandered from room to room with a tape measure and clipboard figuring out where my own furniture will fit. The whole experience was just awkward.

It needed to be done, but the whole thing just felt so very odd… and I’m pretty sure I’ve come to the preemptive decision that I will never even consider a sale “by owner.” I have enough weird in my life without adding that to the mix. For this one small thing, the realtor is worth every penny of their commission.

The right one…

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Knowing I wanted to be out of my current rental by the time this year’s lease expired, I started driving around the county and nosing through open houses a few months ago. I was even more or less settled on the areas and type of house I wanted to end up with. I wanted more than an acre, something mid-century, and well outside town limits. For the record, December and January are probably not a great time to be out poking around looking at houses – there just isn’t that much of a supply on the market and no sane person wants to move in the middle of winter. Even so there were some contenders, but nothing that screamed “buy me now.” I bided Woodholmmy time, assuming that more inventory would arrive on the market with warmer weather. I even toyed with the idea of buying a big lot and then building a small house to suit, before realizing that I house built to my own crackpot specs would be damned near impossible to sell to anyone else.

The funny thing is I thought I knew exactly what I wanted. I’d only been working with my realtor a week when she casually mentioned that I should look at a house down on Elk Neck. It was an eyebrow raiser. Sure the pictures looked nice enough, but the house barely ticked off half of the things on my list. It was one story, on slightly less than an acre, and (terror of terrors) ruled by the covenants and restrictions of a very active home owners association. In fact I almost passed on even looking at it for those reasons until curiosity got the better of me. A house in that neighborhood rarely stays on the market long – and this one had been on the market for almost eight months and $100,000 in price reductions. Honestly, I assumed it was a murder house, or infested with mold, or possibly built on some kind of ancient Indian burial ground.

After the first showing, we were both utterly confused by why this house was still on the market. It was only during my second pass through the master bathroom that it occurred to me – uh, why isn’t there a shower in here? So there it was. The reason the typical yuppie buyers in that neighborhood had been taking a pass on what was otherwise a tremendous home. I proclaimed the design choice “very weird,” and moved on.

Three hours later the seller’s agent called my realtor using phrases like “extremely motivated,” “willing to negotiate,” and “credit for bathroom renovation.”

That conversation let to three days of back and forth discussion, deep research on bathroom renovation costs, another showing, and by the end of the week an offer I was sure would test the depth of the seller’s motivation to be finished with the property and move on with his life. There was a counter offer, a counter counter offer, and finally agreement of nearly all the substantive terms I asked for. I’m still a little shocked they agreed to all the concessions written into the contract.

It wasn’t the house I started out looking for a few months ago, but assuming it passes through the gates of inspection and financing it’s the right one.

The search is on…

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This little project to find a new and improved Casa de Jeff is beginning to get serious. How you know it’s getting serious is I’m altering the long-established Saturday routine in order to fit in meeting with a realtor and checking out a few potential houses. Between now and then I supposed I’ll have to firm up my list of must have options and the list of things I’m willing to trade away. Right now the must have list is pretty short – 1+ acre, 3 bed, 2 bath, and not in needing a gut-to-the-studs renovation. The willing to trade list includes central air, garage, and basically everything else. I like to think I won’t be picky or overly demanding, but I think we all know that’s a pipe dream.

Judging from the few places I’ve driven past to eyeball in the last few weeks, I’m slowly coming to terms with the fact that the dollar doesn’t stretch as far here in the Baltimore/Philly exerbs as it did in West Tennessee. I’m doing my best to adjust my expectations on fit and finish accordingly… on the bright side for you readers, very soon you’re going to be able to play along with my little game of taking pictures inside other people’s homes and wondering what the hell they were thinking with their design and decorator choices. That’s always a treat.

In the meantime, if I seem to get in too much of a rush, feel free to remind me that there is absolutely no timeline associated with reaching mission complete on this project. The plan is mostly to keep plugging away at it and hope I know it when I see it.

Information overload…

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The problem with the internet is it puts every little thing you want to know right at your fingertips. Sure, that’s also the very best part of the internet, but that’s not the side of the coin I’m dealing with just now. In the opening stages of House Search 2015, I’m finding some decent places – or at least places to start… but then my damned inquisitive mind starts to wander.

It wanders to issues of property tax and leads me to the state government websites. It wanders to issues of boundaries, zoning, and planned nearby development which leads me to the county planning website. It skips towards flooding and hazard mitigation which leads me to FEMA’s notoriously inaccurate maps. And then there are the pictures – The fuzzy ones taken by the realtors and then on to the satellite imagery, bird’s eye views shot from airplanes, and Google’s evil car cam. As a side note, Google has not yet reached many the back roads of Ceciltucky. I find it oddly comforting that they actually don’t know everything.

I know more or less what I’m looking for in a house. I’ve moved enough to know what I like, what I don’t, and the fact that it’s all one enormous compromise in order not to totally blow the budget. I suppose it’s time to bring on a professional to help me narrow the scope a bit. From what I gather the good ones make pretty decent coin for sifting through the data I’ve been trying to manage on my own for the last few weeks.

I have to keep telling myself it would be a shame to just hand over their commission without really putting them through their paces to earn it.

House lust…

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Built in 1922, the oak floors and trim were laid down before there was a Great Depression; before Omaha Beach passed into history; before JFK; before Americans could find Vietnam on a map; and before there were red states or blue states. The deep front porch, covered with original terracotta tiles and shaded by a row of oaks, has endured with only a few small cracks. Every door still opens with its glass knob. And the rooms nearly drip with the strong smell of old wood and linseed oil.

I’ve never walked into a house with a realtor to see them stop short, just inside the door, and let out a slow whistle… “Holy shit,” he says, realizing that with only extraordinarily minor modifications, the house has remained nearly untouched by the changes of the last eight decades. The builder’s attention to detail and command of the art and science of his trade are clear. Here, he built a home to last.

I’m smitten with this home, as if it’s been quietly waiting, aging these eighty-four years, knowing I would come. It was spec built for me, generations too early, and if it’s in my power, this place, this old home, on its picture postcard street, will be mine.