Realty Reality: Service above and beyond mere real estate with Katie and Bob . . .

by Cathleen Collins

Realtor, Staging Consultant

Author website

I’ve been trading email this week with a client whose house I listed and sold last week. She’s been under the weather, and I’ve been checking up on her via email and text messaging.

Katie was 19 years old, just barely old enough to sign a contract when she asked Greg to help her find a home two summers ago. I wasn’t a Realtor yet, but remembered her from the stories Greg would tell about how impressed he was with the financial finesse for one so young. He helped her find her house, a charming condo in Scottsdale. He helped her write the offer, so that she was able to buy that house with nothing down and even walk away from the closing with a few hundred dollars left over from her earnest deposit. And after she owned her new home, he accompanied her to meet the head of the self-governed HOA at a meeting they called to greet their newest member and to make sure she understood the “rules.” One of those rules, believe it or not, was that she not get pregnant! Greg introduced the HOA to the Fair Housing Act, so they backed off, but I think the whole experience tarnished Katie’s first home ownership experience.

She never came to feel a part of her community. But inside her own horizontal airspace, Katie made a lovely home for herself and her beautiful new kitten, Bob.

Bob was just about two years old this past summer, when Greg heard from Katie, asking for help selling her house. She had waited patiently as she saw the amazing housing market of last summer, then watched the prices flatten out and even go down a little from what houses were getting last summer, before she was able to sell her house without paying taxes on the capital gain. She had one figure in mind that she thought she could sell her house for and be happy with the profit. But Greg and I encouraged her to ask for more, and about a month later she accepted an offer for that higher amount plus $100 :).

Katie has plans to move to the east coast, but she made a commitment to her employer, so she can’t leave yet. She got a short term lease at an apartment that doesn’t allow pets. And Katie loves Bob. One of the things I’m always interested in when I work with clients who have pets is helping the clients make the transition in a way that keeps the pets in the family with as little disruption as possible. That has meant we sometimes bring a dog to our own home during Open Houses, and when one client couple didn’t think they could keep their old boxer, I offered to find it a new home. Over the years that I’ve been involved with animal welfare groups, too often I’d meet a pet who had been given up because it couldn’t be accommodated in the new home — in fact some of our own pets came to us because their original families were moving on and couldn’t take the furry ones with them. So Katie knew that I would do what I could to help her keep Bob, which ended up meaning we agreed that he would come live with us until she could take him back.

Bob had never been around other cats or dogs, and there are already nine cats and four dogs living in our home. So when Katie brought Bob over to our house a few days before close, we decided we’d keep him in one of our bathrooms till he got used to his new surroundings. While Katie and I sat on that bathroom floor comforting Bob, Greg stuck his head in to hand me the pre-audit, which had just come through on our fax. There we sat, Katie, Bob and me, going over the paperwork on my bathroom floor, with me explaining the entries to Katie and looking for errors. As it turned out, we found about $1,000 more that came back to Katie than was represented on that pre-audit.

The day before close all the paperwork had been signed and the buyer’s loan had funded. Everything was going smoothly. I reported this to Katie, let her know how Bob was doing and checked on her progress with moving. She was still moving out, but promised to be done by the end of that day. After the house recorded the next afternoon, I got a call from the buyer’s agent, to let me know that the premises hadn’t been cleared out. When I called Katie I learned that she wasn’t well, but had removed everything from the house that she wanted. The buyer could have anything that was left or he could just throw it out. Seller warranties in the Arizona Residential Resale Purchase Contract stipulate that

all personal property not included in the sale and all debris will be removed from the Premises.

I could tell from my brief phone conversation with Katie that she wasn’t going to be able to deal with this, but it sounded like what was left in the home wasn’t too bad. So I ran over to finish emptying it myself. I had underestimated the job… So at 3:00 in the afternoon, I started calling around, leaving voice mail messages for other young people I know to see whether any of them wanted to help me empty out the house, offering to let them keep what they wanted in return. I couldn’t reach anyone and now it was too late for me to fall back on the Junk Guys. So I did what any good agent would do… I got dirty. I pulled Mister Lister and Miss Staging (my toolbox and a duffle bag full of cleaning supplies) out of my trunk, organized what Katie had left behind, bagged everything up, swept and cleaned. I dragged everything I could carry either to the dumpster or if it was better than garbage into my car. Noah’s Ark, one of my pet pet charities had a fund raising yard sale last weekend, so it was fitting that Katie’s still useful garbage could be used to help a few more unwanted animals to survive till they could be hooked up with forever-families.

These are the stories I love, the ones where things work out well for everyone… Katie effectively doubled her annual salary — tax free — over the two years she was in that condo, and Greg and I got paid to help her to do that. She will be able to keep her kitty; and other cats and dogs will benefit from the goodness she has shed. Though she had to spend the night in the ER a few days after close, Katie’s health has returned. And then there’s the joy in loving your work for the simple sake of doing good work. Loving to take those extra measures, to help move things along when people really need for us to take those extra measures because things happen that they hadn’t anticipated.

And finally, I’ll admit to having fun privately punching holes in the simpleton accusations of the bubblebloggers as well as the inflated egos of the stuffed-“we’ve always done it this way”-shirt Realtors. We hear from bubble boys like rob, who believe that since we are Realtors we are “vultures” or “all scum” or “DON’T work that hard at all”. Or are commented on by Realtors like Jonathan who say that firms like ours, actively seeking better, less expensive ways to price our services are “the flip side” of service as the “value proposition”. This ignores the fact that in contrast to blindly accepting the status quo, which is having the seller’s agent and his client decide my compensation rather than that being a decision between my buying-client and me, our rigorous thought about pricing structure for the buyer is actually one of the elements essential to providing superior service. I’m certain Nordstrom puts some thought into their pricing…

Gee whiz, fellas, in all the years I’ve been working with clients, in various industries including healthcare, technology and now real estate, how is it that the only people who have ever denigrated the extraordinary quality of the service I provide are people who have never dealt with me?

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