To suggest that thinking about one can cause a grimace and/or tightening in a certain part of the anatomy is not too far from the truth, but for the purposes of this week’s scribblings, Dear Reader, I’m going to save you any squirming in your seats and talk only about the real estate market and what it’s doing.
The reason for this is I’ve come across three people in the last two weeks who have put their homes on the market for a variety of reasons.
One is aiming for a retirement village. Another is moving to a lifestyle property with a new partner and the third has simply discovered he cannot meet an ever-increasing mortgage requirement on top of all the other economising he’s had to endure to survive the current cost-of-living crisis.
A very quick aside here. I do not profess to being an expert in real estate. In a different life, I have sold residential and commercial property. Did okay but didn’t set the world on fire and eventually decided the lifestyle was not for me. Then. Would I have another go now? Hmm. Possibly, knowing what I know now.
I’d certainly do it differently.
I would say however, in my experience, a good agent works extremely hard for their results and his/her involvement is well worth it. Commercial over.
So, I’ve come across these three people, all of whom managed to sell their property within a month of listing, which I gather at the moment is not necessarily the norm, though it obviously depends on where you live.
Anyway. It got me thinking about a couple of instances from my own real estate career which, while relatively brief in terms of years, was nonetheless eventful at times.
Like one of the first auction sales I was involved in.
For starters, the auction room is a high-pressure environment. People can get caught up in the moment and do things they hadn’t expected to do.
Like my purchaser, a quiet but sensible man who I’d been working with. We’d visited the house in question three times. He’d got all his finances in a row and was definitely going to bid once the property came up. He was, as they say, keen as mustard.
I should have known. He had never been to an auction before and seemed to me to be getting paler as the event wore on.
The property he was planning to bid on was number seven of eight that day. Four had already sold and there were a few other bidders in the room, so the tension was quite high.
To my surprise, as I sat there next to him and the next property came up - the one before his with accompanying pictures on a large screen behind the auctioneer - he started bidding.
I have to admit I was momentarily taken aback as he raised his hand. It was only after his third bid I worked out something was wrong. I whispered a query to him but he just ignored me, looked straight ahead, blood draining from his face and kept raising his hand as if on auto pilot.
I tried again. Nothing. Totally confused, and a little panicked by this stage if I’m honest, I sought the intervention of my manager, who came down the aisle to see what was going on.
Anyway, long story short. My client had simply freaked out. The tension building up to his big moment had been way too much and he had jumped the gun and bought the wrong house.
Thankfully, all concerned in the mix-up were very understanding and the “sale” was sorted. It was too much drama for my prospective purchaser unfortunately and he left without as much as raising a nostril hair of a bid on “his” property.
Despite repeated attempts to contact him, to check on him as much as his real estate requirements, I’ve never seen or heard from him since.
Another time, I was doing open homes in a, shall we say, slightly less pleasant part of the town I was living in at the time, and had a house at the top of a rather long driveway.
Each Sunday, I would put out my Open Home flag in my company colours and watch this same little scrote from who knows where make off with it on his pushbike before I could race the 70 metres down the driveway to stop him.
This happened three Sundays in a row - but at the last open home, I was ready for him.
I had made up a flag in our company colours with the words “I Stole This” in the same font as our Open Home signage so it looked just like one of our normal flags. I put that out and sure enough he came along two minutes later and pinched it.
The only consolation I got from the entire episode was the possibility he was riding around somewhere waving the flag and advertising his thievery. And his stupidity.
Lastly, I recall marketing this small do-upper once. It needed a lot of work and was borderline safe for those inspecting it. Smashed gib on the walls, rotting floors, all the light switches etc ripped out, that sort of thing.
It turned out to be very popular with a lot of DIYers picking over it. The only thing was they couldn’t get under the house because there was no access - so the state of the piles, and the possible cost to fix them, was becoming a bit of an issue and making some prospective purchasers wary.
At the last open home, maybe 10 minutes before the end, one DIY enthusiast turned up and did the usual bit of tyre kicking. Unfortunately, he picked the wrong room and the floor gave way, sending him crashing through to the ground below.
Hearing the crash, I went and helped him climb out and immediately shut down the open home early.
The following week at the auction, Floor Crasher prevailed as one after another keen bidder pulled out, citing uncertainty over the piles.
As he signed on the dotted line later, with a broad smile on his face, Floor Crasher told me falling through the rotten floor had been a blessing.
He’d effectively been the only one who was able to look at the piles and subfloor and had deduced they were in good nick and wouldn’t need any work.
He turned out to be a great source of DIY advice for me over the following few years as I embarked on building my own modest real estate portfolio.
I have to say, he was very free with his knowledge and could talk about anything to do with real estate.
But we never got round to discussing the state of his prostate.
