I’ve been keeping pretty busy these days. Sometimes I’m not sure how I get myself into the crazy situations I’m in. Last fall I found myself working with a neighbor trying to help them move to a bigger home to better fit their growing family. That sounds simple enough for a seasoned real estate agent, right? Well it resulted in me spending a LOT of time figuring things out.
I ended up working as a limited agent on the sale of their home. That’s just fine, and I was comfortable with the normal logistics of operating as a limited agent. When we went under contract part of helping put the deal together meant that I discounted my commission. That was still supposed to result in me being paid a little better than I would have just acting as a listing agent. A win win win, everyone gets a little better deal than they could have otherwise.
Well I spent as much or more time on the phone trying to keep this deal together than I have on any of my previous transactions. I’ve had some interesting situations in the past, but this one was one for the books. The crazy thing is, each decision or request or challenge made sense. Most of what was wanted added up. There were a few extras, and somehow I got drug into those extras every time.
I ended up at home depot picking up a cover for a swamp cooler. Then I was caulking cracks around windows, and in front of tubs. There was winterizing the swamp cooler that had to be taken care of, and shutting off the stop and waste for the sprinklers. Figuring things out became my new normal.
The worst one was that the buyer wanted the electrical line to the heat pump covered. I called in a favor on that one because, obviously you don’t want a guy figuring that out. Well it backfired on me. What was a working heat pump without “extra” covering on the power line had become a non working heat pump. The power supply line looked great, but it was throwing an error. We had a home warranty in place, and tried to use that, but the timing wasn’t working out for them. There I was on a light flurrying day trying to solve the mystery of the non working heat pump.
I googled the error code, phoned a friend that works in the HVAC world, called the company that installed the unit. Next I tried to contact the technician that had come out and looked at it from the home warranty company.The breaker was reset dozens of times, I pulled the whole unit apart and tested various connections with my volt meter. I was about ready to throw in the towel, but I read a couple more google posts first. One of them suggested something about the signal wires that weren’t supposed to be touched in any of the process. I figured what have I got to lose. Miraculously that wire swap solved the problem.
I’d like to think I’ve learned my lesson. The next time I won’t go down a path that could lead to such chaos and pain. Reality is I’ll find myself in a similar situation before I know it. I reviewed all the decisions that lead me down the path, and there were a couple of times that I may have been able to foresee problems. For the most part even in hindsight I couldn’t pinpoint signs that would have prevented the situation from getting so out of control. In the end I think both buyer and seller got what they wanted, and I figured things out.
