March Challenge Wrong Place, Wrong time.

Patricia Feager  and Kathleen Daniels are hosting the March challenge in Active Rain entitled. 
March to a Solution
"think about a scenario that can march you into trouble. Please write about a scenario that has the potential to come up during a real estate transaction".

 Anyone that works in Real Estate will collect a plethora or "war stories"  This one resembles less of a March to a Solution and more like running towards disaster. It is a prime example of how innocent and simple errors can quickly turn into potential problem scenarios.

 
It was the 80's  I had about 10 deals under my belt and had the world by the tail.  I was a young rising star and basically knew just enough to bravely go where no agent should ever go.    😬  
I had a showing set up and the listing agent advised me that the house was vacant and the door would be unlocked.  She mentioned that she didn't have the sign out there yet but it was the third house on the left.   We felt a little lost when we arrived in the subdivision due to a surprising lack of posted addresses, no wonder 911 started their address programs for emergency responders.  Now this was long before gps, we didnt have aerials back then and the plat maps only came after we were well into escrow.  Luckily though our mls just started printing pictures in color in the mls books and the house we were looking for was a brilliant blue house.  Yeah we found it.  The buyers were thrilled to find the absolutely perfect house that backed up to a beautiful park.  There were about 10 real estate cards on the counter already and we ran back to the office wrote a full price offer.  It was accepted right away and we were about 2 weeks into the escrow when the title company delivered the title report.  I have to say my first broker did a good job training the rookies to understand the importance of reviewing the title reports and not just handing them to the clients.  I was looking over the title report and the plat map just wasnt making sense when I discovered the darned title company must have marked the wrong parcel.  The lot they outlined on the wrong side of the street!  They even got the name wrong, this wasnt the name of the owner that signed the offer.   Now would probably be a good time to acknowledge the hard work of our title and escrow agents and for the vast amount of patience and professionalism they manage to muster in the trials and tribulations they face constantly.  My hats off to you guys and gals, I would not want your job.  

So with that lets fast forward to the really bad part... the house that was listed was actually the third on the right and was sporting a brand new yellow paint job. I had showed and sold the neighbors house.   I count blessings that we caught it in time but I have pictured that disastrous move in day a million times in my head.

In the end it all worked out the buyers loved the new house just as much.  The neighbor wasnt thrilled and probably started locking his doors but thanked me for locating him to apologize for trespassing. The title officer got a lovely bouquet of flowers a nice dinner and a huge apology.  I learned many lessons in humility, severity, due diligence, taking responsibility and that we don't always know our left from our right.