Selling Nightmares and Lessons Learned

Ever have a nightmare you can't seem to wake up from? Every time you close your eyes you continue to have the same bad dream. Well, it happens in real estate too. I've just roused myself from 2 of the most trying and frustrating listings I've ever had. The first situation occurred when a vacant house I had listed for 4 months was signed over to a relocation company. The sellers turned off the electricity without telling me and the relocation company failed to notify us we needed to turn on the electricity in our company name. After receiving a phone call requesting a showing of the home one Tuesday afternoon I arrived at the house and immediately noticed an odd smell. Only it wasn't so odd once I began sniffing out the source of the smell.
After 8 inches of rain the previous week the basement had about 36" of standing water or what I like to refer to as an indoor pool. Black fungi (mold) was growing up the staircase and the prospective buyer was slowly backing up to the front door where he eventually turned and ran down the driveway. Lets just say after 5 days of pumping by a local Service Master and numerous calls to the relo company I was neither surprised or saddened when the house was re listed with a different company and I was very nicely terminated. Lesson learned: Don't trust the Relocation Company or the seller to remember to inform you when the lights are turned off and try to do vacant house checks more than once a week, especially in the rainy spring.

Bad dream #2. After a year of working with a seller to get her home sold for the price she wanted we finally had a contract that was fair but not quite the dollar amount the seller wanted as a new roof was required ( no surprise) for the house. The first time buyer hired a roofer whom my seller agreed to pay $8,000 at closing for the new roof. The roofer started removing the wood shake shingles on a Wed. afternoon and I got a phone call from the buyers agent on Thur evening telling me that the roofer had ceased working as he had not realized that there was no underlayment on the roof under the wood shingles. He was needing $3,500 more dollars to do the job. Needless to say with 1/2 of the roof removed he had us over a barrel and on Friday morning I called him to tell him that we had to have the roof finished. An agreement was reached between my seller and the buyer where as they would each pay $1,500 of the cost and the roofer would eat the other $500. That Friday evening my seller gave the roofer a check for $1,500 so he could buy the extra wood and pay his workers for working that weekend. Of course it rained that night and wonder of wonders the roofer had failed to follow thru on his promise to tarp the house that Friday night and rain soaked the ceilings of 5 of the rooms in the house. By Tue. when the roof had not had any work done on it I called the company that the roofer worked for and was informed that this company did not do roofing and that while the roofer was the owners son he did not work for them when he did roofing jobs. To make a long, sad story short the owner of the company finally had to hire another roofing company to complete the job, the roofer had to pay almost $1,000 to a contractor to fix the ceilings and the house closed almost a week late which meant that the utilities were turned off on the org. closing date and there was not electricity at this home for several day. Since both of these situations occurred during the same 2 1/2 week time frame I immediately began to think about the sump pump being turned off at house #2 and of course it was raining. Fortunately for my seller we were able to find a friend who had a generator and run the sump pump off of the generator for a few days until the buyer got the electricity turned on in his name. The house finally did close, with a new roof and after much screaming by the owner of the company who had to cover for his son the bill was paid and the ordeal over. Well, maybe over as my seller is considering going to small claims court over the whole ordeal. Lesson learned: Never let the buyer hire his own roofer and always use a company you are familiar with. If at all possible convince your seller to replace the roof before a contract is on the house so your seller is in control of who does the work and how the bill is paid.

Selling Real Estate can be a fun and rewarding career but it is also very stressful and can keep you up nights. Of course with nightmares like this going on staying up nights can be a good thing.