An Absentee Seller, Breakfast Sandwiches, and a Piano
One of my first transactions with RE/MAX when I moved to Carlsbad several months after getting licensed, was a listing I shared with my broker of a house in Cardiff – I was the official listing agent. It was a great experience overall as a way to start learning the paperwork and process, vastly different from how we did things in Massachusetts.
From the beginning it was clear the seller trusted us to do what needed to be done to prepare the home for sale and hopefully sell it quickly, following only a phone call from him and having talked to several other Realtors.
The seller, who lived 2 states away, had used the home but had also rented it, and we got to meet him and his wife just once. There was a fair amount of market preparation needed, given how the tenant left the property, but the owner also had personal items stored in the garage; overall the home could best be described as a fixer.
After we emptied out stuff in the closets and elsewhere in the house and threw out or stored in the garage, I arranged for a cleaning crew to spruce the place up bit.
It was late in 2005, with a crazy market, and the home sold in 2 days at full price once showings began!
The seller came to visit after the offer was accepted, in order to look at all the stuff he had stored, and to decide what to take home and what to toss since the house needed to be vacant at closing. We arranged to meet him at the house, breakfast sandwiches in hand, to talk more about the process but most importantly figure out how to get the home emptied, and quickly.
In this case breaking bread (turns out the homeowner was a big fan of fast food breakfast sandwiches) was a great way to get to know the seller better, and to formulate a plan to empty the garage, darkroom and storage area. I suggested 1-800-GotJunk and arranged for them to pick up everything several days later once the seller left, taking what he wanted. He was thrilled he did not have to deal with all that stuff and it only cost a few hundred dollars to get rid of it.
We also had an out-of-tune piano he did not want to bother with. I told him I would find someone to either buy it or cart it away. I did some research, made a couple of calls, found a piano company that did repairs in the area and who seemed willing to take the piano, depending on condition.
Once I confirmed with the seller it was OK to give the piano away, a few days later I met the piano guy who took a look, decided it was worth repairing, and the piano went to a new home. The seller was thrilled, again. No doubt the piano guy was, too! I was too - the garage and house were now empty.
All in all this was a memorable sale, thanks to the seller. He allowed us, and encouraged us, to do what we needed to do to make the sale happen, although there were some specific things he needed help with, and things he didn’t realize he needed help with! That's where working with the right Reatlro makes all the difference!
This seller also did all he needed to do from a distance. Meeting him was a bonus, although the relationship had already been well established, and it was such a pleasure to be able to help him meet his goals and to take care of things he really could not given where he lived. It’s been 12 years and I still think of this first absentee owner transaction fondly! And it was a terrific learning experience.
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