real estate value

Cutting to the chase

Prologue:
My mother loved the flying red horse, emblazoned on the wall next to the Mobil Gas Station, at the corner of 8th and Main Street in our little town. As she would recount her dreams to us each morning at breakfast, she reported that she would find herself on this mighty steed, visiting distant locations and returning, amazingly, just before she awoke. Sometimes she would go back to her home in Burlington VT, sometimes, the upper east side of New York City…sometimes, she would visit the Spanish steps of Rome.
The set up:
We real estate agents sometimes encounter sellers who can’t bring themselves to sell their homes, really. They list them for sale, often at a too high price or for unrealistic terms…they have a tremendous emotional attachment. Sometimes, their spouses want/need to sell, one owner adamant and the other reluctant but seemingly interested in selling. On one such occasion, I had some good friends who wanted/needed to sell out. One of the Sellers got stuck, though. Though I had no idea about this fact, there had been a child who had died in the home that was on the market now, for four months, at a too-high price. The Seller must have felt that a lower price would represent abandoning this child if it actually sold out. The seller was hanging on for dear life!

I was re-thinking my role in this sale…it had been going on forever! "Listings for life" are not a good tool for success for anyone, neither agents nor clients.


This seller’s emotional intensity reminded me of my mother, a little. I called the seller one fine afternoon, prepared to release the listing and abandon the quest of a new owner for the house, at least on my watch. In relating the story of my mother’s late night dreamy wanderings to this seller, I recalled the ease with which my mother visited far distant places, and noted that my mother was able to visit each location with alacrity and at will in her dreams and on a fabulous and legendary steed. Furthermore, she most certainly didn’t need to own the property she visited.

A couple of days after our conversation, the seller relented, lowered the price and we sold the home. What I didn’t know at the time was that this transaction was a critical piece in a larger familial struggle, in which other family members many miles away were in a murderous conspiracy to take over their estate by the elimination of the heirs of the sellers’ estate (the seller’s children). The sellers had sold out, just in the nick of time ane were able to foil the plot!
The moral to the story:
We don’t always see the totality of people’s problems. Sometimes we don't even see so clearly the ones in front of us. We certainly don’t often understand the outlying ramifications of either action or inaction. What we do see is the frustration of inertia, indecision, and hand-wringing grief...the most obvious. When a solution comes that clarifies and resolves, we are all greatly magnified and rewarded. When the solution disarms heinous plots and conspiracies, we are indeed and in deed, “…making a difference.” Vive le real estate agents!

Action steps:

As my father once remarked, “Stay alert! The world needs more lerts.”













































Tim