You know when you’re sitting around at your local motorcycle club’s club house, sipping a beer, shooting the breeze and the talk turns to real estate..? this happens all the time. No actually it doesn’t, it almost never happens. But one time it did..
Grady asks me, ‘Why do I NEED a realtor?’
Perhaps a bit tipsy, I retort what seems like hundreds of reasons.. pricing expertise, contract negotiation, we have the key – but mostly my point was “we keep the crap storm from hitting you.”
I’ll probably never know what changed Grady and Jessa’s mind about using a realtor, but a few weeks later I get a FB message: We’re on!
At that time I had this dream listing in FOPO. It’s going to go fast, and it’s going to go “expensive”. Jessa has fallen in love, but it’s a bit fast for Grady. It’s way more than anyone wants to spend, and it’s one of those ouchy situations.. It also sets a scary benchmark for what we want to find. Will anything compare? The listing blows itself out of the water, goes pending and closes at 30K over asking. Well, that’s a relief.
So we look at other houses.. like the one right next to the McDonald’s drive thru window – “Would you like to supersize that?” “No, I said, O-R-A-N-G-E drink.” YA, that’s a NO!
Or the one that smelled of Eau de Malamute… Another No.
And then I go on vacation. I’m going to exactly where Grady is from, Montana. So while I’m getting a hint of Grady’s upbringing (I even found a place called the Gadbow Hotel) they’re shopping with my co-worker Scott Cotrell. It’s the last day of my vacation and Scott calls me.. They’ve found it!!
It’s a sweet, sweet, one owner home built in 1945, but decked out in pristine mid-century pastel appliances and fixtures. It’s got a HUGE garage, with (purportedly) 220 service, and there’s a clean, nice, livable basement with a second full bath, plus it’s 2 minutes from the motorcycle club house we were hanging at. SCORE.
I might have written the gooiest cover letter ever, but it worked.
The granddaughter of the family was facilitating the sale of Grandma’s house. Grandpa had been a metal worker and created roll-bars for trucks through the years. There was 3 phase power, power vents, and all sorts of crazy plugs in that garage. He even made the wood stove by hand.
The more they read about my clients and their backgrounds and interest in the home, the more emotionally connected they got. So much so, that when we found that some of the electrical was fairly ‘grandpa-rigged’ they repaired it so that Grady could indeed use his dream garage as intended. When we wanted to try to keep the hand made wood stove (we couldn’t), they complied with my attempts. It was a dream scenario..
Some houses just fit, some family stories are so similar, some people believe in kismet. When things get tough, these are the emotional ties that get us through.
We had a mad dash to close. I felt a bit like a kitten wrangler. Bruce Ankarberg from Heberle Electric pulled off a stunning feat of late hours and weekends to get the electrical situation remedied. Michael Sullivan of Capital M Lending pulled out the stops to get us docs during the never-realized ‘Snowpocalypse 2014’ which gummed up the works regardless of no snow. Environmental Works moved appointments around to help us get a radon abatement system in prior to close. Kass Wheeler of Ticor Title, had Grady and Jessah signing on a WEEKEND. Diana Pompe, the listing agent, kept tabs on the Appraiser…
It took a village of hard workers to close this thing before Thanksgiving, and it happened because of the professional service that the “Realty” world can provide. I am thankful for that first conversation with Grady and Jessah, and the opportunity to prove my worth.
Congrats guys! So happy to have you as neighbors, friends, clients! XO, Alyssa
