Thursday, September 10, 2026

We were three days from closing. Three days. And the buyer's cousin finds my Instagram post from like six months ago where I'm at a listing on the same street, different house, and I made some joke about the neighbors having a rooster. A rooster. Because they did, it was loud, it was funny at the time. Buyer's cousin screenshots it, sends it to the buyer, buyer calls me at 9pm asking if the neighborhood has noise issues. I explain it was a different property, completely different situation, the house we're closing on is quiet, I've been there multiple times at different hours. Doesn't matter. She wants a credit. Twelve thousand dollars because of a rooster joke about a house four doors down that she's not even buying. My broker's telling me I need to delete the post. I deleted it. Then she finds my TikTok, which I forgot I even had, where I did a tour of a flip that had some foundation work and I said something about how you gotta check the permits in this area. Not her house. Not even the same zip code. But now she wants an engineer out there. The seller is losing his mind because he already bought a condo, he's got movers scheduled, and this woman is treating my social media like a home inspection report. I stopped posting entirely. Just stopped. Eight years of building a following and now I post nothing because someone's cousin has too much time. We closed eventually but she got four thousand in credits and I paid half.

The title search flagged something. That's what I should have been focused on. Instead I'm at the staging walkthrough arguing with the designer about a $400 velvet ottoman that looked like a bruise. Purple. Like actual purple. She's telling me it's "aubergine" and I'm telling her this is a three-bedroom in a school district, not a boutique hotel, and meanwhile nobody's looking at the survey from 1987 that shows the neighbor's fence is eight feet over the property line. Buyers find out at closing. Their lawyer finds out. Everyone's looking at me like I personally built the fence. The deal fell through. Lost the commission, lost the referral from the sellers' cousin who was relocating from Denver. But here's the thing that kills me. The ottoman. The purple ottoman. Stayed in the house for the next showing. And that buyer? Loved it. Made an offer same day. So apparently I'm wrong about everything.

The offer came in under asking. By like twelve thousand, which honestly wasn't crazy for the market right then. My sellers were motivated, we could work with it. But the other agent, this guy, he calls me and says his buyers want a response by 5pm or they're walking. It's 3:30. Fine. Rush my sellers, get them to counter at eight under, send it over at 4:47. Radio silence. Next morning I call him. Voicemail. Text him. Nothing. Finally around 2pm he calls back and goes oh yeah they decided to go with another property. Just like that. No rejection, no withdrawal, nothing in writing. And I'm standing there thinking, you gave us a deadline and then ghosted? But here's the part that actually made me want to scream. Three weeks later his buyers come back. Same buyers. New offer. Five thousand less than their first one. And he presents it to me like we should be grateful. Says the market's shifted. The market shifted in three weeks? Really? My sellers told me to tell him where to put it, which I did, professionally. House sold two weeks after that to someone else for asking price. Found out later he'd been licensed for like eight months. Brand new. Which explains some of it but not the part where he never once apologized or even acknowledged that he just vanished for sixteen hours after demanding we rush. That part I still don't understand. Just basic communication. Pick up your phone. That's literally the job.