Coeur d'Alene Idaho Real Estate SUCCESS Stories for December, 2010

Janna Rankin Scharf, GRI, CLHMS, SFR - Coeur d'Alene, Idaho Realtor

I enjoy posting success stories as they occur.  Happy endings.  We read so much doom and gloom about the real estate market, it's nice to hear of things that go right!  I decided not to let the month slip away without sharing my December Coeur d'Alene Idaho Real Estate Success Stories!

The first closing I had this month was a happy ending to the search for a beautiful parcel of waterfront property on Lake Coeur d'Alene.  My clients currently live in Indonesia and wanted to take advantage of the incredible Buyers Market to score a site for their future waterfront retirement home.  It was a lot of fun, researching and visiting properties for them, by land and by sea.  We Skyped and we worked around a 14 hour time difference. 

I was always a day behind
in getting things  done, since no matter
what I did, it was always yesterday to them! 

I took photos and produced a virtual tour of the properties they were most interested in.  There were challenges with purchasing vacant land, most lenders don't want to touch it!  The few who do have very stringent underwriting requirements.  We had a list of obstacles to overcome, but overcome we did.  Mike and Arwen got the proverbial Smokin' Hot Deal, and they are ending the year as happy owners of a choice couple of acres with 100 feet of level, sandy beach water frontage on Coeur d'Alene Lake's beautiful Powderhorn Bay!

My next December closing was a very happy day for my clients who had been in search of their retirement dream home, the last home they would ever live in.  It is an amazing story of how we came to find The Perfect Home.  I wrote about it here.  Harland and Dianne, while still in boxes, were able to celebrate their first Christmas in their new home in 2010.  What a happy new year it is going to be for them! 

Yesterday's closing was the conclusion to a traumatic 5 year journey of some of my Seller clients.  Financially devastated by the collapse of the real estate market, they made the tough decision short sale an investment property.  It meant closing the door on ever hoping to recover hundreds of thousands of dollars of savings they had invested.  After overcoming several crises in the past couple weeks that threatened to torpedo the deal, we got it done yesterday without a minute to spare.  For my clients, it wasn't a day to celebrate. It was a day of tears, of mourning the loss of their life savings and dreams for the future.  But it was a day where they finally had closure to a situation that had been draining them physically, emotionally and financially for years.  Even still, it was a success story.  A success in that I was able to negotiate them out of the requirement that they sign a promissory note for part of the huge deficiency.  And a success in that their lender considers their debt paid in full and will seek no recourse to recover the deficiency.  And a success in that they have closure and can now look to the future and start down their road to recovery.

Tomorrow begins a new year. 

2011 is a blank slate for us to fill.  As I look back on 2010, it was a good year.  Not free of stress and trials, but it was a good year.  MANY more successes than failures.  Although there is always much that is beyond our circumstances to control, I find that life really is what we make of it. 

I am expecting 2011 to be a stellar year, and I plan to do everything within my power to make it so!