A seller’s market for homes — until you try to see yours
The real estate agent doesn’t want us to be in the house when she shows it, but sometimes it can’t be helped.
I do pretend to work from home, after all.
It’s odd to see strangers nosing their way through the house, peering quickly into some rooms, lingering in others. They don’t know that my desk has never been so neat, so uncluttered as it is today. They don’t know that there’s a big rip in the upholstery on the back of the sofa, compliments of Millie the cat. They don’t know that we didn’t remodel our kitchen to look like it was from the ‘50s, but that it actually is from the ‘50s.
They don’t know that the drawer they just slid open wasn’t sparkling clean and empty yesterday — that all the years of junk it collected are now sitting in a box in storage on the other side of town. We should have just left it full of used rubber bands and thumbtacks and the little pads that go under the legs of furniture and extra twist ties and pocket change and little packets of plant food that come with flowers. We should have just left the drawer the way it was, so that if they buy the house, they won’t have to spend years filling it up with the exact same stuff we did. We had already done it for them.
Of course, if we’d left it full, they would have thought we were messy homeowners: “If they can’t even keep their kitchen drawers clean, who knows what else we’ll find?”
I hear stories about houses in big cities that sell the afternoon they’re listed, for more than the asking price. Bidding wars are common, even. Not in our neck of the woods. Our agent likes to lower our expectations.
“Don’t expect it to sell the first year or two, but after that you should be able to get about half what you paid for it,” she says. Hard to believe she’s not giving pep talks to NBA teams.
I can understand why she’s not too happy about the deal. After all, when it finally sells, we’ll be getting 94 percent of her money. She also tells us, using short, easyto-understand words, that homebuyers don’t care about the new septic tank, the way we had the driveway rebuilt, the new floor in the kitchen, all the electrical work we had done, or any of the other improvements we’ve made over the years. They just want to know how this house compares to all the other homes on the market right now.
“But what about character?” I asked. “This house has so much personality. It’s unique, it’s unusual.”
“Yes,” she said, “but despite that, I think we may find a buyer — someday. Just don’t get your hopes up.” I guess character now means old. Personality means problems. Unique means no square corners.
I hear stories about houses in big cities that sell the afternoon they’re listed, for more than the asking price. Bidding wars are common, even. Not in our neck of the woods. Our agent likes to lower our expectations.
160 Seremma Court Lake Katrine
“Look at that yard!” I persisted. “No one else around here has that much land. You can’t even see the neighbors.”
“Not much we can do about that,” our agent said. “I’ll try and bring clients in the back way so they won’t see how much yard work they’ll have to do if they buy this white elephant. Why you didn’t tear it down and build something nice, I’ll never understand.”
“All we have to do,” I said, “is find a rich hedge-fund manager with a horse-crazy 13-year-old daughter, and we’ll sell it in a heartbeat.”
That seemed to hit a nerve. The real estate agent shook her head, near tears. “If we’re lucky, we’ll get the Clampetts to buy this thing. We can help them take the furniture off the roof of their car.” She didn’t really say that, but I could tell she was thinking it. She simply can’t imagine who would buy a house like this.
But I know who will. Someone just like us.
Contact Jim Mullen at mullen.jim@gmail.com.