By Living Room Realty, December 5, 2018
What makes all the hard moments worth the effort to push on?
My partner, Kim Parmon and I, worked with a first-time investor who fell in love with a bank owned property while it was pending with another offer. We met this client through our lovely preferred escrow officer, Emily Hummel with Fidelity National Title, who should be used as a model officer for escrow companies on how to handle transactions and client relations. The home had over five sale fails so we watched it. Sure enough, a week or so later my watchlist alerted me it was active again. We put in an offer and a few days later, after some back and forth on price, we got the home under contract.
Nothing about this transaction went as expected. Not that a transaction usually does, but this one had special circumstances that made it unusually tough. First tip-off would be that this home was bank owned. Anyone who’s been involved with a bank owned deal is not kidding when they tell you they are especially tricky. The second hurdle came following inspections. The home hadn’t been lived in for months, so we were expecting a laundry list of items that needed attention. Well, we got that and then some. Let’s just say the word ‘terminate’ got tossed around from the beginning of the two-week transaction until about three days before closing. But our client loved this house. And that’s the client that makes you want to work hard. The one that refuses to give up and throw in the towel when it seems like everything that could go wrong, has gone wrong. So we didn’t, we pushed on.
We made it to the finish line, unlike so many buyers before us. With a fed up listing agent, what felt like an unneutral escrow officer, and us, two babysitters…I mean buyer’s agents with a client that’s about to take on her first flip and couldn’t be happier with the outcome. In a few months this humble abode, walking distance to downtown Milwaukie, will be ready for a new owner and we can’t wait to see what our ever so determined client produces!
And that’s what makes the juice worth the squeeze.
