Here is my story of selling over Christmas holiday. I purchased one of my favorite houses ever at the foreclosure auction. It looked perfect from the outside and was on a private lane on the hills in La Mesa with a view to downtown and the harbor in the distance. It was occupied by a couple who had given up trying to maintain it and they were giving up the home to move into another property they owned. We reached a mutual agreement and paid them some money to help with their move.
The gentleman walked me through the whole house and showed me everything wrong and all the cool stuff. The house had a crazy pond at the front door that went underneath the wall and extended into the foyer. Full of koi fish that I had to try to get rid of on Craigslist because we were not going to be able to take care of it during the construction. House had a workshop with bath underneath and photoelectric solar (which was broken but I fixed it). There was a leak in the tile roof right over the master closet and the closet was full of green mold. But, after fixing it all up the master closet was to die for
Here’s the photos (combine the two lines below to get the l ink. Don’t laugh… these were the days when my agent and I tried to stage by ourselves
http://www.brenthaywood.com/SanDiegoRealEstatePhotography/9479-
Tropico-Drive-La-Mesa-CA/i-NM8Nhp3
Anyway, there was a flurry of people trying to buy this house. This was 5 years ago and I don’t remember whether I even had a smart phone. Probably just a dumb cell phone.
I call up the In Laws in Florida and explain that I might need to do some work while visiting their home. “What??? Noone works over the holidays??? You are just making that up, why would you need to work??” They just did not get it. They reassured me that they had a Brand New Computer and Internet access. I did not bring anything electronics with me besides my phone.
Arrive to find out that my cell phone did not work in their location so I had to give my agent the home phone number. I spent almost all Christmas day on the phone with her because there were so many showings and so many questions coming in from buyers. In Laws were not happy and just couldn’t understand why anyone would call with work questions on Christmas Day. The day after Christmas my agent called to say that there were 2 offers waiting in my email.
Yes… Grandma and Grandpa had a computer. I had never seen such an old lunk of a machine. AND… they had D i a l U p I n t e r n e t… they were very proud of how cool they were. I had never experienced such misery just trying to turn the computer on and wait for it to boot up. It took over 15 minutes just to load up my email. I could not get the attached offer files to load to the screen because they were too big for the internet access.
Then I discover that they were very thrifty with computer paper. They had a pile of old emails they had printed out (they didn’t know how to read anything on the computer screen, they tried to print everything out to read it). So, I had to load old used paper into the printer and try to print out these offers on the other side of the paper, at a rate of about 1 page per minute with the old printer. Then the printer ran out of ink and they just couldn’t understand why I needed to run out to a store and try to buy ink.
OK, we get the offers printed out and many phone calls back and forth to California. I had to keep putting $5 on the table because they were very upset about the ‘long distance phone calls’. I kept having to ask my agent to do some research (I sometimes research buyers and/or the loans they are getting) and more emails with attachments, such as proof of funds, etc. All of this while Grandma and Grandpa have the freaking TV blaring full blast because they cannot hear well.
Finally on Dec 27 I have decided to send a Counter Offer to the buyer I have selected. In addition, I had to try to print out all of the California disclosures and fill them out by hand. I now have a 37 page document that I need to send back to my agent. No such thing as a scanner so I realize I am going to need to Fax these docs. I get into Grandpa’s car and start trying to find somewhere in their Senior town to send a fax. I end up at some kind of stationary store next to the grocery market. The guy behind the counter must have been at least 87 years old. He did not know how to operate the Fax machine. I stood there for 42 minutes while he … are you ready for this??.. faxed each page one at a time, sometimes faxing the wrong side of the page… Load one page… dial the long distance number… wait for one page to fax. Repeat 37 times. He would not let me come behind the counter and touch the machine.
I had to pay $1.50 per page!!!
This is how you get work done in the Senior Citizen community
