So you may have noted a rapid embargo of real estate information immediately after the house went on the market and the Hey Look At Our House era ended. Two reasons: rapid sale and the Interweb.
We put the house on the market on Friday the 18th of January. I was hosting Weekend America that week (shrewd planning, Moe, maybe you'd like to adopt a chimp that week too just to keep a bit BUSIER?) and so I went off to work, kids went to school or Grandma's for the day, Jill, well, I'm sure she did something. Life was a bit of a blur. Afterwards, we all went to Tukwila (suburb south of Seattle) and checked in to a hotel so we could be out of the way and so the kids wouldn't spill food and fling toys all over the house we were trying to sell for a whole bunch of money.
Cut to Saturday morning. When I host(ed) the show from Seattle, I would get to KUOW by around 7am to make sure everything was ready to go and to do last minute script tweaks. I check my email and it's our realtor saying there's an offer. After one day. If you listen to the show I hosted immediately after, I believe you can hear many things in my voice, including exhaustion, madness, hope, and cynicism trying to drown the hope. I couldn't quite believe that in 2008 an offer could be made so rapidly. I also knew it was a great house in a great neighborhood at a fair price.
So later on Saturday, we get an email with an attached scan of the offer. I read the names of the potential buyers and what's the first thing I do? Right: I Google the crap out of them. Within less than a minute I have at least a cursory knowledge of who they are. Then what happens? Right: the dawning of the knowledge that they've probably already done the same to me and there are many, many things about me online. And now I knew how people in their 20s who grew up online feel ALL THE TIME: everything I ever did online is out there somewhere. And look, I've always written online as if anyone in the world could read it (not that they'd want to read everything I ever wrote) but still, I lead a sort of public/private hybrid life and much of it's out there. I hope they never found out about My Terrible Secret! (note: no terrible secret).
Part of the staging of the house involved the placement of a bottle of wine (given to us by Jeannie Sleater-Yandel) on this antique radio we have. We decided that when the house sold, we would uncork that wine. We signed the offer, the deal was in motion before an open house was held, the house went through inspection, and that wine popped open.
But in real estate there is the SOLD sign going up and then there's closing, usually many weeks apart. And so: information embargo. Talk about packing on the blog, I figure. Talk about sports and Obama and all that. But as for real estate talk, lips zipped shut. The house closed just as we were boarding the train.
Next time I'll tell you about the train.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
A good Realtor is taught to and usually does, keep in contact once a week with their client during this "vacuum" period. I encourage them to call even if they have nothing to say. al.
We went through a few bottles of TUMS when we were buying our house. We also didn't talk about it, didn't blog about it, etc. We were terrified that we would jinx it. We even waiting to pop the cork on our celebratory bottle until we were in our new house.
Well, damn. I hope we brought over a decent bottle of wine!
Post a Comment