“Craving Community During a Pandemic”

Jenna and Bryan used to live in Portland, moved to Seattle, but still had their best friends (mutual friends of mine) in Portland. Babies were born, and major life events happened, but these friends still found time to drive back and forth for weekend visits. Once the pandemic hit, I think a lot of our perspectives changed. Lifestyles were impacted. Work life was impacted. Working from home for an indefinite amount of time has led to a lot of people reconsidering where they call “home.” I’ve had a handful of clients who decided to sell their house here and move out of state so they could be closer to family. Since they can work remotely, it didn’t really matter where they worked, so they chose family.

When I got the call Jenna and Bryan wanted to move back to Portland, I was over the moon excited because I knew how much it was going to impact the lives of our mutual friends. I couldn’t wait to get started in their search. Yet again, I was looking at a lot of property on my own, since it wasn’t practical for J & B to drive down from Seattle unless the property was REALLY close to what they were looking for. We didn’t even see that many houses. We found one really quickly, but lost out to a competing offer, but we soon found another. It’s funny, because these clients were wondering if they were being too picky or taking too long to find a place and I had to laugh. Clients that were closing at the same time they were had been looking for a house for 8 months! J & B had only been looking for 2 months, which is not much time considering it was almost winter and mid-pandemic.

We were due to close the day before Thanksgiving. Due to some lender issues, it got delayed. Not news I want to send to either party, but once again, we had a solid foundation with the sellers and their agent and we all worked together to make sure Jenna and Bryan got to move into their new home, even though we hadn’t closed yet. It was Thanksgiving and the sellers couldn’t bare to think of them not being able to be in their new home. I love happy endings like this. And seeing good friends reunited, living within only 2 miles of one another, makes me even happier.