I Understand Needy

Today's weather couldn't have been more delightful, and especially after our cooling northerly wind arrived on the scene. The most important errand I had to run early this morning, was to get out to Menard's and purchase bait for those Japanese beetle traps, and then run home and get them placed in appropriate areas. My goodness, I still can't believe how quickly they stripped the leaves on my apple tree. Nasty creatures.

There were some bills needing to be paid, along with doing some additional research on several properties I'm hoping to get listed in the near future, and of course I had to patiently wait for a mid-afternoon hour to arrive, which was the time the listing agent on the home I had an over-asking price offer on yesterday, was to let me know if my buyer ended up with it or not.

After hanging up the phone from that agent's call last night which was my notice that we needed highest and best offer by mid-day today, I had this gut feeling my buyer's offer wasn't going to be accepted. In spite of our coming in well over asking price, no inspections, 20% downpayment and a letter of pre-approval from a local bank, I still had this 'feeling' it wasn't going to be good enough, and after reading an email which came in from the listing agent after the hour of three, my feeling was fully confirmed.

Of course I had to immediately call my buyer to let him know he didn't get it, which is always something I despise having to do. But, I assured him that his offer was more than generous considering the home having been built in the mid-fifties, containing less than a thousand square feet of living area on the main floor, and a tight-fitting 20' x 20' attached garage with little space for storage. I won't be privy to what it actually sold for until it's closing, but I'm certain it went for more than $183K, which in this town, I believe that's a pretty rich price per square footage. Having said it for many years, I'll likely go to my grave saying, “I understand needy, but never greedy.” But, in these times, it seems to be all about grabbing every God almighty dollar they can, which in the end, is plain and simply superfluous.

While visiting with a colleague today, we both agreed there are hundreds of recent homeowners in North Iowa who'll be more sooner than later, upside-down on their mortgages. Of course many of our Realtors have been having an heyday raking in big bucks since the pandemic arrived, and only because of this near non-stop impetuous buying spree that's been going on, and believe me, the sellers are even more delighted to see their bloated proceeds checks handed to them.

Of course on the flip-side, many of those sellers are doing step-ups, which means they're likely paying premium prices for what they're turning around and buying, which ends up becoming a vicious circle. Unfortunately, many of these step-up buyers, weren't in the market yet when we had the 2008 financial crisis, which means they've never experienced a downturn. Only several days ago, I happened to notice where a guy who purchased a home two years ago, just recently sold it, and took over a 22K bath on it because it sold far under what he paid for it, and then had to pay the normal seller's closing costs which also included a hefty real estate commission. I never did any business with that person, but we did happen to cross paths once, and believe me, he had this high and mighty attitude at the time. Hmm...I'm now wondering what his current thoughts are regarding his not-so-profitable real estate investment in Mason City. As I've said for many years, buying real estate as an investment, takes years to create a good yield.

One of my long-time friends called and asked if I had time to go over and help her get some boxes of pictures down from the top of a very tall bookcase, so I agreed to meet her over there at shortly before the hour of five. Well, I dare say I did my paying it forward because there were more boxes than I was expecting, and they were stacked about as high as possible on that top shelf. Thank goodness she had a strong chair for me to stand on. I just happened to notice a book written by a distant relative of my friend, which was about growing up in a farm family with ten children, so I asked if she'd let me read it, and then I'd give it back to her, which she agreed. I later paged thru it a little bit, and for sure I'll soon have to get it read from cover to cover. I did notice there was a balance of five boys and girls which were randomly distributed in the line, which definitely would've given the family 'tree' more balance. Yes, that little chore ended up being the highlight of my day.

Tonight's One-liner is: We are what we love.

original post ... https://niowarealty.net/life/2024/07/17/i-understand-needy/