Tag Archives: inspection

Quiet time for me right now….


Quiet time for me right now…. (edit/delete)

Well the real estate market is a funny animal.   Sometimes you are so busy you don’t know where to turn.  You are running around and falling in to bed late.  Then it gets quiet for a bit… I am in one of my quiet bits… Perhaps the two are related… When you are running around you do not have as much time to prospect.  With prospecting brings clients… When  it calms down you prospect again.  Ideally you never stop prospecting so the pipeline never slows… The quiet time is a bit convenient (except for the lack of sales) since my dad is recovering from a stroke.  It isn’t that I haven’t been busy…. I had the busy start of the year… The buyers with cash in the suitcase.  I also had a pending fall on inspection… I have a buyer who wants what I cannot find… So it is quiet…. I hope to get busy but we will see… So now it is a quiet time for me right now…. Give me patience…. Maybe I should work on my 2011 taxes and prospect.

So if you want to buy a home in the Treasure Valley Call Debbie Holmes.  She is a great agent with some time on her hands….

Bad Real Estate Day….


OK today was not a good real estate day….  Real estate has me down today….  We had a re-inspection on my pending…. Everything on the list passed but due to the 1.5 inches of rain we got (and all the melting snow) there was 1 or 2 inches of water underneath the plastic in the crawl space….. This is the sound of Debbie beating her head against a stone wall…. My seller is way past his lower limit and the buyer will probably walk tomorrow…. I would guess my seller ought to fix the problem and try to sell at a higher price…. The market is improving so this is possible… We thought the problems were finished.  We took all sorts of actions that were un-testable due to our dry winter.   The day is gray and it matches my mood…. Just after I had this cheery news I talked to my very sick tenant… She has pulmonary embolisms in her lungs and developed a fungal pneumonia… She is at home and requested a grab bar for the shower.  I scheduled my workman to do it on Saturday.

I hope tomorrow I get it together….  I must prospect…. The serenity prayer is in order today…. I must remember my people are all well, nobody died…. Just problems…. Lots of problems….

Long day…Car troubles… 2 pendings in two days…Great friends! Or all’s well then end’s well…


This has been a very busy day. On Friday my buyers finally found a house and we came to terms on Monday. The ninth offer of 10 was accepted…. Not only that my listing, 722 Pearl had an offer on it. Today we have a ratified contract!

I scheduled my inspection for the buyers at 1 PM. The inspector’s business manager (wife) rescheduled us for 4 PM. I knew the inspector was busy so I called him around 3:30 PM… He was still in Payette (over an hour away). He thought he could be there by 5:30… I was a little nervous about an inspection in the dark. At 4:30 I call him to see if he had left Payette. He was just leaving but he was sending his partner to do the outside stuff in the light. I told him I would meet him there but it would take me 20 minutes to pick up my client and get to the site. That was OK because the other guy was going to do the roof and outside stuff. I call my client and tell her I am on my way…

I get into my car and plug the phone in and the little light doesn’t go on….I can’t figure out why….Then I go to start my car…Nothing happens….I check my lights and sure enough I had turned them on in the daytime and left them on….I try to call hubby at home…He isn’t there (he is at work without a car because he walked)… Then I have a brainstorm… Some very good friends (and yes former clients, friends before they bought a home for their son) lived around the corner from my office. I call and I get the husband (who likes to work on cars) and ask him if he can jump my car… I tell him I have an appointment in 15 minutes…Yes I have roadside assistance just no time to wait… He doesn’t have jumper cables but they can get me to where I need to be. I call my client (her hubby is out of town) and tell her my car wont start but I can get a ride to the hotel then either she or I would drive the car to the new home…My client is a very new driver who doesn’t usually drive herself anywhere)…. My friend comes with her grand-baby in the backseat and takes me to the client’s hotel.

I thank her profusely and we have a nice chat on the way to the hotel. On the way the male half of my clients call me. He is worried that I will have his wife drive into the city… I assure I will work out getting home from the hotel by myself. It will be fine. Turns out the female half of my clients is a pretty good driver who just needs someone to sit next to her for a bit while she gets more practice. The inspection goes very well. I call my hubby to meet us at the hotel and we go back. My client stays with me while I wait for hubby. He shows up a bit later then expected but I expected that…We have dinner go back to my office and jump the car…

Today was a good day with some trials that I got over with some help from my friends….Thank you Fred and Carol!

Working from the hospital….


In the last post my step-mom was in the ICU.  She is getting better and will finally have the surgery on her arm tomorrow… It has been a very difficult week and my step-sister in law and I took the car home this weekend.  I do not have pictures from the hospital but I will include one from a break at the beach on Thursday… I do love the ocean. I actually went in fully clothed because I left Boise in a hurry and had no time to get a swim suit.

Debbie at Santa Monica beach

Now as an active real estate agent I still had work to do.  I did not work on new clients but I had 2 things that I had to keep going.  I have a pending that we ran the inspection on.  I picked this bank owned house for the buyers (sort of scary) and they came up Sunday July 31 to see the home.  They liked it (phew….) and we proceeded to the inspection scheduled Wed.  I arranged for the inspector to be let in.  We got the report on Thursday and my buyer wanted to walk.  It was just a little more repairs then he wanted to deal with.  I prepared the return of earnest money form and sent it to the buyers.  I informed the loan officer.  The loan officer called the buyer and talked him into waiting.  He thought that the underwriter might call many of the items that worried the buyers.  He often works with this listing agent and I was relieved but a bit nervous.  My buyer sent the inspection report for the underwriter.  I waited and waited…. I wanted to see what the underwriter was going to pick.  Meanwhile my step mom developed a liver problem to add to all her other problems.  It was a tense day.   I was worried because Friday was the last day for the earnest money to be returned because of the inspection.  I waited some more getting more worried.   I talked to the listing agent who assured me I could get my buyer out of the contract or hope for the underwriter to pick the scary stuff up….  I had not worked with the loan officer and felt this was leaving my buyer very vulnerable.  What if the underwriter didn’t care about the same things that concerned my buyer?

I called my broker to discuss the problem and came up with a solution (poor broker I started talking told him I figured it out and went to work).  My solution was a very careful reading of the contract.  I could stop the clock by putting in the repair request.  I knew, my buyer knew and the listing agent knew that the seller would not agree to anything that didn’t prevent the underwriter from approving the loan.  But it also stopped the clock until Monday.  Today the seller agreed to wait until the appraisal was in so my buyers doesn’t have to worry about losing his earnest money.

I still don’t know if the sale will go through but my buyers will get their earnest money back if they don’t proceed with the sale.  I know the house is a good value.  I have protected the buyers!  If I had $25,000 cash I would be glad to buy it as an investment.

I did all this work from the hospital…..People (including the listing agent) were helpful when they heard about my situation.

‘The other project I worked on is a job site I hope to list in a couple of weeks.  I have been working as a sort of contractor arranging the workers at the site.  I left my handyman partner in charge of meeting the sprinkler guy (that is really the name of the company) and the heating contractor.  I got the report and talked to the owner.  Again it is amazing what you can done with a cell phone and a good internet connection….

This was a very tough week and I am very tired.  I am up $7 from gambling in Tonopah on the way home (the Ramada is very nice)…..I did my caregiving and my real estate work from the hospital room….Pray tomorrow goes well for my step mom tomorrow….