Well,  It has been a busy last couple of weeks.  I’ve closed 4 deals and written an offer on another place.  I thought I’d share with you  some of what all went down, good and bad.  By the title of this post, feel free to be humming True Colors by Cyndi Lauper.

Guess I’ll start with the best.  Just a few days before their closing, my clients discovered that a window they had replaced a few years ago had leaked during a heavy rainstorm.  It was just about a cup of water.  I’ll spare you the minor details, but the fantastic thing is that my sellers wanted to make sure this was resolved for the buyers.  Do you know how easy it would have been to have never mentioned the leak?  Unless the buyer did the walk-thru during a heavy rain storm, nooooooobody would have even known.  In my line of work, you see people at their best and their worst.  These peeps were at their best.

I closed one yesterday that had been pretty bumpy.  It all started out okay, but every time the seller’s agent and I had something ironed out, there was always a little bitty change when it came time to put it on paper.  When I got the contract, the seller had crossed out the fridge.    When we wrote up the repair list, the seller’s agent called to say that he would do all the repairs.  When I got the signed list back, the word “Replace” had been changed to “Repair.”  Then she tried to tell me that it was just semantics.  I bit my tongue, but I wanted to say that if both words mean the same to her, why can’t we just use the word “Replace?”  Then this seller wanted to stay in the house after the closing.  The contract said possession with deed, which means you get the keys at closing.  My buyer and I both felt like this seller could not be trusted to be out when he said since he always seemed to be renegotiating everything. 

Fortunately the conference room at the mortgage company was tied up.  The sellers went in an office and did all their stuff, then the buyer and I went in and did our stuff.  Well…….My “Stuff” at that point is to snack on whatever candy they have sitting out.  From what I was told, the seller kept making a bunch of sarcastic remarks while he was in the lobby.  When the title guy went out to the lobby to tell them they were free to go, the husband said “Good, I didn’t like him anyway.”  In my line of work, you see people at their best and their worst.  These peeps were at their worst through the whole thing, and are probably like this anytime they don’t get their way.

At another closing, I found out that the buyer’s were not doing a final walk-thru.  Now, I don’t know all their details, but I just can’t imagine not doing a final walk-thru.  I think if these were my buyers, and they didn’t have time nor didn’t want to do it, I would have been over there checking it out for them.  Once we close, any problem is their problem.  I had the seller, so it really just made it easier for me!  That was a pretty friendly deal.  We had some tough parts during negotiations, but nobody was nasty.   My sellers said that the buyers seemed very nice and she wished them well.  Everybody was at their best.

I had a really wacky deal with another one of my listings that closed last week.   During their final walk-thru, the agent called to tell me there was a stain in the carpet and asked if my people would pay to have the carpet cleaned.  I had to graciously say no since the stain was there long before the buyers ever saw the house.    I sent her the pictures I had uploaded on the MLS showing that the stain was already there.  We’ll count this one as everybody being at their best.

Then I had an offer accepted for some of my all time favorite clients.  The seller is an elderly man who recently lost his wife.  The house is one of those once in a lifetime deals for my peeps, and we are all trying to make it easy on the elderly man.  He lost his wife and now is losing his home since he is moving in with family.  Everybody is already being their best on this one, so I am sure it will continue. 

So, here is the advice I give myself:  Decide how you want to be ahead of time.  If you don’t, it is too easy to make a bad choice if you are trying to make that decision in the heat of the moment.  I haven’t perfected this yet, but I know how I want to be.  I guess past generations called that character.