I didn’t show any properties last weekend, because it rained.
And rained and rained. The downpour was historic; the weatherman said that if it had been just a little bit colder, we would have gotten snow instead, and we would have gotten six feet of it!
So anyway, hubby and I stocked up our cupboards and we stayed in and cooked. The week, we figured, could start on Monday.
But it turned out to be a pretty good week. The first sign that things were going to be all right was at the beach: I own an investment property near the shore, and flooding had previously forced me to gut the basement, so I was pretty sure my house had washed away in this deluge.
Au contraire: walls, ceilings, still there. Basement dry. Sure the weird leak into the hall light fixture — the one that two handymen, an electrician, a plumber and a physical engineer haven’t quite been able to diagnose — was still there, and some raccoon had dragged kitchen garbage all over my front porch, but all-in-all I thought I got off relatively easy.
Then I ended up previewing a bunch of properties. Whenever I get depressed, I try to do a direct mailing, which I know is good for my business, but never makes me feel peppy. I have to remember that what I like to do is to look at inventory. And it always helps; it gives me stuff to natter about to people, which reminds them that I’m an agent, and in turn leads to conversations about double sinks and radiant heat, and that always cheers a girl up.
So then I did a second showing on a property for one of my attorney clients — and his family. The target listing was in a big new condo that he likes a lot, and we’ve been traipsing in and out of it. This time, though, I slowed down and showed the laundry room, the gym, the club room and the pool. Flubbed once — surely it would confuse anyone that in a 60-story condo building they put the roof deck on the 30th floor? — but overall I give myself a B. The client’s family were nice people, so if they didn’t like me, or the unit, I wouldn’t necessarily know, but I feel like even getting to meet them was definitely progress.
Also, I went to a party — Realtor 101: thou shalt go out and press the flesh. People who don’t sit in front of databases and sift through classified ads and listings all day think that what we do is exciting, can you imagine? I guess in a world that glamorizes forensic medicine, we do have exciting jobs, so I tried to bask in that a little. (My husband would say I probably just had too much wine.)
Finally, I caught another decent Internet lead — a finance guy who needs a buyer’s agent. Hello, hello, me, me! He is looking in a submarket where there’s not much inventory — I have exactly one property to show him — but he mentioned a different neighborhood, too, and tomorrow I am going to go and preview the hot stuff there. I am meeting him and I think his wife on Saturday, so at least I’ll have a sheaf of brochures to hand to them, and a lot of cool stuff to natter about.
