Saturday, September 16, 2017

Liar, Liar Pants on Fire -Getting my Bearings

Getting My Bearings
Over the next number of days I was introduced to all the other realtors in the office. There must have been at least twenty – five of them. They came in all sorts of shapes and sizes and all from different backgrounds. There was an old truck driver, another, a structural engineer, an economist, an agriculturalist odds and sundry housewives looking for adventure and even a teacher or two.
It took a little while to get used to this collection of adventurers, certainly a different bunch of people than any I’d ever worked with. Largely, they were friendly enough, even helpful at times, but I’ll get back to them. There are certainly enough stories about them to fill a book.
It turns out the boss was right. The phone WAS my friend (from time to time). I got the hang of it pretty quickly. Not wanting to appear too obvious, instead of saying “Do you want to sell your house (or buy one) I opted to firstly announce that I was in the business and depending on the reception that prompted I would say something like did (whoever was on the other end of the line) know of anyone wanting to sell or buy. God help me if someone said yes.
Within two days someone did say yes and I was in for experiences I never would have imagined.  The owner of the house had a rental property right next door to his home and he was sick and tired of nonpayment of rent. He was an accountant so we never had a problem of establishing the value of the home. The place had been vacant now for about a week or so and the only problem he did have was to clean the place up so it could be shown.
Well actually, there was more than just one problem. Already the middle of December, it was a little chilly out and I could hardly wait for my sign to go up with my name on it. In the meantime, there was a little black mongrel dog lying beside the door on a raggedy old blanket, shivering coldly. He looked like he was on death’s doorstep. It was obvious that his owner had left him there for some sucker like me to pick him up – so I did, blanket and all, and put them in the back of my car. We hadn’t had a dog in a while so I had to stop and pick up some dog food, dishes, a leash and supplies. Finally getting home to our ten acres in the country, I let the dog out of the car, taking the supplies into the house. While I’m busy doing this, the dog takes off across the field and I figure that’s the end of him. I put his raggedy blanket out on the deck in case he comes back and continue bringing things into the house. Next trip outside and I see the dog come roaring back to the house and he stops dead in front of me. In his mouth is a yellow tennis ball.
I guess the heat of the car had revived the poor little critter enough that now he wanted to play. Where in all that ten acres he’d found my daughter’s tennis ball I’ll never know. She’d lost it about five years earlier and he honed in on it. We played ball until it was time to go pick the Missus up from her job. Both of us were exhausted.
Ah but I digress again. Proud as a peacock, I visited my “For Sale” sign every day, just to see my name on it.  I must have thought myself to be a rock star. It wasn’t too long before my seller had found a “buyer” himself. The only problem was, he had no down payment.
Not to put too fine a point on it, I had befriended a mortgage broker and a lawyer and with the help of my broker, I put together a deal where I contributed a dollar to make the deal binding and the seller would take back the whole mortgage for a year at which time the buyer would find his own mortgage. Well, fair enough, the buyer jumped through all the hoops, bought his own insurance, paid the legal and land transfer fees and I managed to put a sold appendage on my precious sign.
Two days later the seller phones me up and says: “Come look at your sign.”
“Uh oh, what’s wrong?” I wanted to know.
“Just come and look,” laughs the seller.
I go streaking out there like a bolt of lightning because I know something’s wrong with my precious sign. No, there’s nothing wrong with the sign, but the house behind it no longer exists. Well, a small pile of rubble and ash does but little else. The Insurance Company apparently vindicates the buyer and the seller and forks over the settlement out of which the seller gets his mortgage paid, the buyer ends up with a twenty-five thousand dollar vacant lot and I end up with a remarkable dog.

That’s as far as I want to go in analyzing this transaction.

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