HOUSE FOR SALE

HOME FOR SALE

 

Our house is for sale and the experience is somewhat unnerving. Like a high school senior with applications to ten colleges we have no idea what or where our lives will be in ten months. The only thing for certain is uncertainty. Not only do we not know when or for what price someone will buy our home, we have no idea what sort of buyer to expect. We learned that lesson the last time around.

 

 

*****

 

In 2008, in the depths of the most recent housing and stock market busts, we put our house in Ramsey, NJ up for sale. Two years earlier, in the flush of the real estate and stock market booms that had preceded the busts, we’d impulsively bought a house in North Carolina and started a two-year process to move south.

The timing cost us money, but no need to second-guess water for having flowed under the bridge. In the world of bold real estate moves, the relevant cliché’ is: “You win some, you lose some.”

Concurrent with the downtown in the 2008 market my wife, Katie, obtained her real estate license. Cause and effect? Bad luck?

 

 

 

I know this: In six months on the job she had customers who missed appointments; customers who couldn’t make decisions; and, customers who made the attitude “the customer is always right” impossible to maintain. Despite working every weekend she never made a sale nor obtained a listing.

But she did have the inside track on listing our own home. I interviewed her carefully:

“What commission will you charge?” I asked.

“None,” she said. “We’ll save at least 1.5%.”

“You’re hired,” I said.

 

*****

 

In anticipation of listing the home, Katie had a carload of agents from her office visit and offer suggestions.   As a result, we moved furnishings around and painted several walls. We weren’t exactly “staged,” but some wisdom from experience was put to work.   A cedar shake contemporary with unique window shapes and exposed beams, our house was not for everyone. For a buyer with traditional tastes (ninety percent, according to studies), our house would not appeal.

Concerned that selling might be a slog we listed on September 1, nearly a year before our mid-2009 move date.   If a buyer appeared and offered a reasonable price, we would do the deal, regardless of closing date, even if we had to move out early. After all, our likeliest buyer would be open to the unusual, the absurd and the lack of any ceilings over most of the first floor. We couldn’t risk losing them.

The first few showings weren’t promising. “Weird,” said one review. “Too modern for us,” said another. One customer was open to a contemporary home but required a swimming pool.  A foreign customer indicated he liked the interior but wanted us to replace the exterior siding.

“Is anything wrong with it?” Katie asked.

“No, they just don’t like it,” said their agent.

“That would cost $40,000,” said Katie.

The agent offered the telephone equivalent of a shrug.

Several other lookers needed to sell their homes first, a contingency we wouldn’t consider. Most were simply not interested, either due to price or location or the sheer unusualness of the construction. Since the etiquette is for the homeowner to not be present for a showing I never saw the prospective buyers. Feedback filtered from realtors to Katie over the telephone.

 

 

*****

 

One evening Katie received a phone call from a shopper who said he’d located our listing himself on his computer.   Though on-line shopping is now the norm, in 2008, buyers were just beginning to shift from having a realtor compile a list of houses for them to see. The caller (called Joseph herein) had no agent and, therefore, would be Katie’s customer if he chose to buy. We were excited at the prospect of saving an additional 1.5% but also concerned he was wasting Katie’s time.

“Does he have a family?” I asked.

“No, he’s single,” said Katie.

“He wants a four bedroom house in the suburbs for himself?” I asked.

“He said he wants to see it,” said Katie. “It can’t hurt, right?”

“Good point,” I said. “So is he coming out next weekend?” I asked.

“Actually,” he wants to come tomorrow morning at 7,” said Katie.

“Seven a.m.!” I said, intrigued. “Why?”

“He said he works odd hours,” said Katie.

“Hmmm,” I said. “Sounds strange. I’ll hang around to see him.”

 

*****

 

At night, before falling asleep, we speculated what Joseph might have found attractive about the on-line picture of our house.

“Maybe the rhombus-shaped windows,” I guessed.

“Maybe the decks shaped like a ship,” said Katie.

“Or the pile of boulders in the front yard instead of grass. He won’t have to mow them,” I said.

By 7:20 the next morning we’d heard nothing from Joseph.

“Probably not showing up,” I said, the voice of skepticism.

“Don’t be negative,” said Katie, though she was also fighting the fatigue of dealing with disappointments.

At that moment a massive black Range Rover sped around the corner and pulled into our driveway. I peaked through our bedroom blinds to see it stop abruptly just inches from our garage door. The driver remained inside behind tinted glass for several minutes talking on a cell-phone, long enough for me to express more negativity. “Joseph might be a mobster.”

 

Finally, he emerged, a middle-aged man with medium-dark features and a long, black ponytail. He had earrings, tattoos and wore a leather jacket. “This guy is not Mr. Suburbia,” I reported to Katie while we went to open the front door. “Looks more like Cheech or Chong.”

The doorbell rang and Katie greeted Joseph while I hung back, curious but vigilant. Though his affect was far more motorcycle gang than soccer dad he was soft-spoken and polite.

“Sorry for being late,” he said. “I work crazy hours.”

“What do you do?” asked Katie.

“I’m a drummer in a band,” he said.

 

 

“Wow,” said Katie. “Our children might know your band but we’re not really up on the local music scene, so….”

“You might have heard of us,” he said. “The Allman Brothers.”

“THE Allman Brothers?” repeated Katie.

“The ONLY Allman Brothers,” he said, smiling.

Joseph walked past us through the foyer and gazed into our living room, while we were still processing our shock. He didn’t appear to notice the cathedral-like ceiling; he didn’t look out the windows to the woods beyond; he didn’t remark on the vast expanse of open space. He walked straight to the fireplace, the most traditional part of the entire house.

“Is it a real fireplace?” he asked, a dreamy expression on his face.

“Yes,” said Katie.

“Does it work with wood?” Joseph asked.

“Yes,” said Katie. She glanced at me as though to say: “This is weird.”

“Can you make a fire?” he asked.

“Sure,” said Katie, who motioned to me to gather some wood.

“Can I sit here?” he asked, taking a seat on a couch in front of the hearth.

He watched as we got the flames going. I couldn’t help wondering why the most unexceptional aspect of our house appealed so much to this famous musician.

 

 

We sat down on a sofa across from him and watched the fire crackle. Katie and I hoped the flue would clear the smoke more effectively than it usually did. Joseph looked like the most contented man on earth.

After the fire died down he took a quick look around the house. Finally, he said: “I’ll take it. I’ve always wanted a working fireplace.”

It certainly was not up to Katie to point out that every house in our neighborhood had a fireplace. Probably, most houses in our town had fireplaces. Over the next few days I worked out the terms of the contract with the drummer’s attorney. He barely negotiated off our asking price. We closed two months later.

 

*****

When our daughter, Sarah, was little, her favorite books were the Berenstain Bears series. One was entitled: “Don’t Judge a Book by its Cover.” The expression always stayed with me but I’d never applied it to my own life until dealing with our buyer, the vaguely scary-looking sweetheart of a man who played drums for one of the wildest rock bands in history. Due to my ecological sympathies, my view of massive SUV’s is still reflexively negative. But my view of pony-tailed, tattooed, earring-wearing, leather-clad men is as non-judgmental as can be.