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I'm feeling pensive this week having just received news of a family friend's death. Ila was 92, so by most accounts, she lived a full and active life, but her passing was unexpected just the same. To be more precise, Ila was my mother's best friend and our families camped together every summer throughout our childhood. In many respects, she was like a second mother to our entire family, and her youngest daughter, Kristen, was our best friend. Kris was one of the few friends Jill and I shared equally and we spent a significant amount of time at one another's homes reading "Archie" comic books and eating Reese's peanut butter cups in the comfort of our sleeping bags. (Kris' father spoiled us rotten so we preferred our overnighters there.)
Sadly, life has a way of intervening as people grow and go their own ways. Regrettably, we lost touch along the journey, but even so, the loss of Ila feels profound, like a well-loved chapter that's forever closed.
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It’s official, August 17 came and went, and per the new regulations, sign-up sheets simultaneously appeared at ALL of our weekend open houses. For those of you in the hunt, I’m sure you ran into them.
“Can I ask you folks to sign in? I said, “It’s now required by the NAR . . . ” (and it is). With few exceptions, people politely complied with little push back. (Thank you, I appreciate that.) What do Realtors® intend to do with your signatures? NOTHING . . . It's time. It's overdue, and I'm up to my eyeballs in STUFF I no longer need or want . . . I've cleaned out my storage room, home office, closets, and garage, and have hauled all of the superfluous items over to 100 Echo Avenue to sell on SATURDAY!
After owning this income property for more than a decade and renting it out fully furnished to short-term renters, I have an entire household of goods and items that need to find new homes. I'll be selling beds, couches, a dining room table and chairs, rugs, small appliances, linens, dishes, lighting, Serena & Lily wallpaper, etc., etc., etc. What's left will go to the White Elephant Sale or some other worthy cause. I'm ready to let it all go (cheap)! "I'm a Pepper,
You're a Pepper, He's a Pepper, She's a Pepper, Wouldn't You Like to be Pepper Too?" Remember the Dr. Pepper jingle? It's popping into my head these days as I prepare the duplex Cliff and I own for the coming Fall Market. In other words, if you think I don't know your pain . . . think again. My dad loved cards. Bridge, Hearts, Gin, Rummy, Casino, Canasta, half a dozen versions of Solitaire, and Cribbage, just to name a few. And he taught my sisters and me how to play from an early age. Cribbage was, and remains my favorite card game, and Dad being the cutthroat cardshark he was, if you missed adding your score correctly, he swooped in and pegged the points for himself. Consequently, I quickly learned to count my cards very carefully . . . .
I'm not gonna lie, I left Tuesday morning's COMPASS meeting wondering if it wasn't time to retire and move to Italy. The amount of new regulations, addendums, modifications, and corrected forms set to take effect on August 17 regarding the recent class-action lawsuit and the subsequent settlement by the NAR (National Association of Realtors), feels like an avalanche of utter nonsense. Clearly, those pulling the strings have no understanding of how the industry actually operates and functions, OR how Realtors® work day-to-day, OR what we bring to the process . . . .
Instead of a common-sense approach to clarifying and bifurcating the commissions, they have taken a system that wasn't broken and proceeded to break it. If clarity was the intended goal, the "fix" is anything but. Cliff and I have just returned from an amazing two weeks in Italy. We began in Venice where we took a cooking class in a professional chef's apartment, joined the Backroads gang for an exceptional e-biking trip through the lush valleys and meandering rivers of the Dolomites, and finally finished in Lake Como at a stunning hotel on the water's edge, complete with a sweet balcony that overlooked the sparkling glacier-fed lake below.
All in all, it was a fantastic vacation . . . with the exception of one glaring misstep at Castel Fragsburg in the charming town of Meran on the first night of our bicycling journey. Defined as a "5-star luxury hotel," room 305 failed to meet the description. "Our guests arrive on Saturday!" I said to my contractor when I arrived at the cabin on Wednesday expecting to find the project much further along and ready for our finishing touches. (It was nowhere close.)
The floors hadn't been grouted, the plumbing wasn't connected in the primary bathroom, the room downstairs wasn't painted, the baseboards weren't attached, the pathway wasn't finished, and the entire place was covered in a coat of thick construction dust, We still had shelves to build, boxes to unpack, AND an entire house to clean and put back together before then . . . (WTF?!) "Julie, can you please send another check my way for the work that's currently underway?" said Alex's text message.
I can, but OUCH! The cost of repairs is really beginning to pile up. It turns out that owning a cabin in the mountains, especially when the snow has been significant for the last two years, can add up to major expenses. A burst water pipe, a cracked skylight, a failing roof, a crumbling pathway, and a flooded basement have created havoc at our little "dream cabin." As luck (bad luck?) would have it, one discovery has led to another and another and another . . . With full recognition that these are "gold-plated" problems, they're still problems nonetheless, and they require a rather LARGE financial outlay to fix the unfortunate damage. In short, like Alice, we have tumbled down the rabbit hole. When we secured the listing on Arroyo Avenue, it wasn't our usual quick refresh-and-sell project that usually requires just 3-4 weeks of intense activity. This home had suffered a good deal, and as a result, needed a rebirth that included gutting most of the interior, and virtually starting from scratch. In other words, we were looking at months - not weeks to bring this property to market in its best light.
It was all hands on deck to be sure. |
AuthorJulie Gardner, has been writing The Perspective for 18 years and has published more than 775 humorous but always informative, essays on life and real estate. 
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