Tuesday, September 1, 2026

The open house went fine. Good turnout, maybe 12 groups through, nice comments about the kitchen. Buyers came back same day with a full-price offer, no contingencies except inspection. Sellers were thrilled, we're all thrilled, everyone's shaking hands. Inspector finds a crack in the foundation. Not huge, but it's there. Buyers ask for a structural engineer. Engineer says it's been repaired before, maybe 8 years ago, and the repair is failing. Estimate comes in at 40 thousand to fix properly. Buyers walk. Fair enough. But then the sellers have to disclose it to the next buyers, and the next, and suddenly we're 60 days in with three dead deals and the listing's radioactive. Turns out the sellers knew about the original repair. They just forgot to mention it when I asked about property history. Their word, forgot.

The second showing was supposed to be quick. Just the husband coming back to check the garage dimensions because his wife liked the house but he needed to see if his boat would fit (it was a 24-foot boat, the garage was maybe 20 feet deep, so already no) and my broker calls me mid-showing to tell me she's pulling the listing from our system because the seller switched to her nephew's brokerage, which fine, except she's telling me this while I'm literally standing in the house with a buyer who drove 40 minutes to measure a garage that won't fit his boat for a house that's no longer ours to sell. And my broker's main concern on the phone is whether I remembered to put her name on the lockbox sign-in sheet from the first showing because apparently there's some dispute about commission splits on a totally different property and she needs documentation. The husband is asking me if I have a tape measure. My broker is asking me about a sign-in sheet from three weeks ago. The boat was never going to fit. I told him the boat was never going to fit but he said his wife really liked the kitchen.

The lender called three days before closing. Not about the loan, about the photos. Apparently someone on their team pulled up the listing and saw the staged living room and asked why there was a different couch in the appraisal photos. Different couch. Because the staging company came back and swapped furniture between the appraisal and the final photos and nobody told me. The sellers hired their cousin to do staging because she had "done it before" which meant she owned a storage unit full of furniture from estate sales. Fine. The cousin shows up with this massive brown sectional, I mean this thing looked like it survived three divorces. But it fit the room, whatever. Appraisal happens. Then the cousin decides actually no, she wants to use her new gray sofa instead, the one she just bought, so she comes back while I'm at another showing and swaps everything. Now the lender thinks we're hiding something. Like we removed furniture to cover up floor damage or something. Had to get the sellers to send a video walking through the house proving the floors were fine. The cousin kept texting me saying she didn't understand the problem. Twelve texts. She didn't understand why I was upset. The closing got pushed five days. The buyers almost walked because they had movers scheduled. My sellers had to pay for a rate lock extension, eight hundred dollars. The cousin still has not apologized. She asked me last week if I had any other listings she could help with.