Every Realtor from time to time has difficult listings. Over the years I’ve ran into last minute financing problems with buyers, unexpected discoveries at home inspections, and family drama. I’ve also had the great pleasure of selling beautiful homes with few hiccups along the way.
My most complicated listing took 181 days to sell. At the beginning of 2021 I worked with a true gentleman who owned a stilt house in Swifts Beach in Wareham. There were massive views of the water and easy access to the warm water of Swifts Beach itself. The house was done up beautifully. He wanted a high price, however there were nine homes for sale in all of Wareham when I posted it, and with the lack of comparable sales we decided to go for it. It should have been a relatively simple sale, but it was not.
He had tenants in the house, and while they initially told him and me that they were ready to leave they most certainly were not. They made it impossible to take good pictures, and made it even more difficult to show. We didn’t even post or show the listing publicly for over a month after signing the agreement because of it. My client was raring to go, and I wasn’t going to say no. So we posted it. The tenants requested 72 hours in advance of any showing, and somehow, they often were exposed to covid before a scheduled showing. Initially people were still interested in the property, and I was getting near daily showing requests, but I could not get the buyers in. At one point we discussed pulling the property from the market until they had left. The owner was adamant about keeping it up.
Weeks turned into months, and finally by the end of May the tenants did leave. They left it clean and orderly. No issues there. We took fresh pictures. I changed the description for perhaps the fifth time, but the property had the stigma of sitting on the market in a market where houses sometimes were only available for hours.
We were approaching four months without even an offer in the strongest seller’s market ever. The owner was frustrated. I was frustrated. At one point I hosted an open house without a visitor. In comparison, my open house the previous day at a different house could have been a block party. Still I kept showing it two to three times a week.
The week the listing was supposed to expire he made it clear to me that he was happy with my efforts, but felt the need to work with another Realtor.. I had two more showings scheduled. One of them was for the day after the listing expired. I asked for his permission to see it through the last showing, and being a gentleman he wished me luck. That final showing a wonderful young couple from central Massachusetts came, fell in love with it. Within two hours I had a straightforward full price offer with a quick close.
Sometimes it isn’t days on the market that matters. It’s about getting the job done.
James Abdu | jamesabdu@uppercaperealty.com
