It Was Mid-Day...9/10 & We Just Confirmed Our List Appt. for 7:00 on 9/11...

It was exactly 10 years ago today...an entire decade, I'd just finished a conversation with a client, re-confirming our meeting the following night at 7:00 pm on 9/11 to list their home for sale.

I say a client, because the wife (prior to the husband) had purchased the same home from me a few years earlier and were now moving again. While I never assume future business, the vast majority of my business is from repeat clients and personal referrals, and the prior home buying experience (at least) from my perspective had been positive one. I was completely prepared for our appointment the following evening and was eager for our meeting, prepared for business, yet not prepared for the emotion to follow.

Like everyone else, the shock and disbelief that occurred very early (CA time) the following day changed our lives forever and I can tell you the last thing I wanted to do that evening evening was to meet with clients about selling their home. Now keep in mind I'm definitely old enough to remember Nov. 22, 1963 and hearing on the radio while driving my Corvair Monza that JFK had been shot in Dallas. Shortly followed by watching Walter Cronkite looking directly into the TV camera with a pause and taking off his dark rimmed glasses saying the President had died. It still brings the emotion of decades ago to me today, remembering and watching that moment with my mother, a  frozen moment in time. A loss of innocence for many of my generation (yes I'd admit it was the era of Gidget, Frankie/Annette and Beach Blanket Bingo) nothing like we'd ever experienced, and about the worst that could happen we thought at the time.

Yet the events that followed on 9/11 as we all know were unimaginable even though many of us had lived through another dark time in history...and getting back to my point.  I called the clients mid-day to say I was not up to meeting with them that night and would like to reschedule our appointment.  As turned out, they were ready, willing and able to talk real estate...yet I was not, and to this day have no regrets. As it turned out, when I didn't meet with them that night they called another REALTOR, and listed with with another in 2 days. But then again, it's a definite possibility I was the first REALTOR and maybe they'd already scheduled to meet and the second the following day and that's okay too.

So for those of us who pick and choose what happens in our daily lives, and those of us for whom anything and everything financial is connected with the real estate market as our sole livehood...as a long-time r.e. geezer, believe me I understand how important business is...yet we ALL have our watershed moments to place business aside with NO REGRESTS, 9/11 was one of those times for me.  I only hope that generations to come will always remember the sacrafice and loss of the day. 

God Bless us all!