Shut UP, I Sold a $1,520,000 House!

Utterly Spectacular Views Observed: 12
Parties We Walked In On: 2
Paintings With Famous Artists We Saw Up Close: 1, At Least
Embarrassing Incidents that Happened While House Shopping: 5 (I can think of off the top of my head)

One of the things I love most about helping people buy a home is that we often end up spending so much time together we become like family. I’m happy when we find their perfect house and happier still when we successfully navigate the escrow process and they come out on the other side owning their dream house, but part of me is a little sad to be done riding around town with them hearing about their lives. This is especially true of Ed and Cheri:

We had so much fun looking at amazing properties together. The houses were gorgeous, the views were stunning, the kitchens were to die for and the company was unbeatable. Sure, there were some rocky points, but nothing super memorable, I think.

Except the time I managed to drop the key to the front door of a 6000 square foot house somewhere in the house without realizing it until we went to move on to the next house, and it was nowhere to be found. We spent 20 minutes scouring the property before Ed magically plucked it out of the grass in the middle of the backyard, about 30 seconds before I was just going to abandon the $1.4 million dollar house open to vandals and thieves and make a dash for the Mexican border to live out the rest of my life in humilation in Cholla Bay. He still makes fun of me for that one. And it remains possibly the most horrifying 20 minutes of my career to date. I blame it on low-blood sugar. It was really close to lunchtime.

Also not a bright spot in this particular home search was the time we made an offer on a house they thought might be The One, and spent several days waiting for a response only to discover the listing agent had been lying to us about the fact that the sellers just needed another day to make the decision. They actually had another buyer in the wings and they used our offer to leverage a better deal out of those people and cut us right out of the equation. We all left the incident feeling like discarded tissues someone had blown their nose in and abandoned. It wasn’t pretty or particularly morale building for anyone. The silver lining I can garner from hindsight is that this house was not actually The One. It was a bit on the small side compared to what they ended up with and the backyard really wasn’t that fabulous.

I could go on for days with Ed and Cheri stories, but suffice it to say that despite the low points in our journey I truly enjoyed our time together and I will miss those days, packed with almonds, diet cokes and peanut butter granola bars, critiquing the residential architecture of Fountain Hills, Cave Creek (oh geez, and then there was the time my GPS malfunctioned and we ended up driving literally through the actual namesake creek of Cave Creek; that was another dicey moment I will have to deal with in therapy someday), and finally, Troon.