It's one of those movie scenes you don't forget. It's from the movie Flight and it's after the airplane has gone out of control. The pilot, played by Denzel Washington, is struggling to do everything he can to keep the plane in the air. Finally, he realizes he's got to do something desperate. Something unconventional. Perhaps even unthinkable. He's got to turn the airplane upside down and fly it that way. It's the only way he can regain control of an out of control situation.
If you've seen the movie, you know that the flight ends in a field after clipping a church steeple. I won't tell you anymore about that part of the movie in case you haven't seen it. But I will tell you that the pilot survives and so do lots of people.
The wife and I recently decided to take a flight to Seattle for a fun weekend. It was hot and miserable where we live. And it was Labor Day, so why not...
After we boarded the airplane, I was listening to our pilot talk about the flight we were about to take. And as he was talking I thought, "I hope he doesn't get bored up there in that locked, quiet cockpit because he's done this so many times that its routine." But then I thought, "Wait a minute. That's what he gets paid to do. To be boring and routine. To do his job. To fly the plane. To pay attention even when he’s done the same thing over and over a million times.” And that's true. But then I had another thought. While he gets paid to manage the routine everyday stuff of flying an airplane, what he really gets paid to do is to be able to take action and solve the problem(s) should anything ever go wrong, like it did in the movie Flight. That's really what he gets paid to do. To be ready to solve problems. And potentially catastrophic problems.
As your REALTOR® this is what I do.
"Oh sure," you say. "Yeah, you're like an airline pilot...ready to save all those lives if you have to. Uh-huh."
Okay. Okay. I get it. Maybe my job isn't quite the same as the airline pilot. But maybe it isn't all that different either. While I manage the routine parts of your Real Estate transaction, if and when needed, I am a problem solver of the highest degree.
In a typical Real Estate transaction I’m at work behind the scenes keeping things running smoothly. You’d be surprised how many times I have to call the other agent or the lender or title or someone else to make sure they didn’t forget to pay attention to what they’re supposed to be doing for you. At other times I’ll be moving paperwork back and forth between people to make sure your lender has everything they need or for inspections or for lots of other reasons.
When your entire life is in that moving truck and suddenly we can’t close so you can move in, I will find out who screwed up and why. I’ll spend hours on the phone, if need be, to untangle and find out what is going on so we can get answers to the hold up and figure out a solution. Although not nearly the same an aircraft emergency, when that kind of scenario happens, it is stressful and hard for my client who is trying to move. And it could end up costing them lots of money for overage rental fees on their moving truck, hotel fees, feeding their family and a delay in getting back to work.
I tell people in my listing presentation that everything I do can be summed up in two activities: 1)Marketing their home to potential buyers and 2)overseeing the transaction from negotiation to closing.
It’s that second part that often requires me to monitor what is happening and to be ready to go intoemergency mode, just like an airline pilot. Which, by the way, is exactly what happened when we were trying to land in Seattle.
But that's a story for another blog...
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