How Much I Kind of Hate Steve, The Mechanic’s Face at This Point: A Lot

Do you ever have days where everything is ludicrous? I feel like sometimes, ridiculousness and lunacy is like a big mass out in space, and the more of it you have, the greater the gravitational pull toward it becomes and more and more insanity gloms together until pretty soon it’s just a giant black hole of crazy. Generally, I’m right there in the very center of it, either with my head exploding or drinking heavily; depending on the time of day. Tuesday of this week was one of those days for me.

To begin with The GOV has been acting up lately. (I was reminded by a Twitter pal today that not everyone knows what the acronym GOV stands for. Apparently people may be under the mistaken impression that I have my own personal Jan Brewer that’s been in at the shop all week. I don’t. It stands for Giant Orange Van. Because it’s orange. And giantish.) We’re trying to stay away from the word ‘lemon’ around The GOV, but let’s just say that I suspect if you poured iced tea in the engine you might end up with an Arnold Palmer (you know, the drink with lemonade and iced tea mixed? No? Too obscure? Sorry.). We’ve had nothing but problems with the beast. Her latest trick is randomly not starting. This is super fun when it happens in front of a client’s house with my clients in the car. It really instills confidence in my negotiating abilities when I can’t even coax my own car into puttering to life.

And then, of course, when I took the GOV into the shop last week (after it sat, all night, out in front of my client’s house where it refused to start and then magically started the next morning) they ‘couldn’t replicate the problem’, which I now understand to mean ‘we think you’re insane and probably have automobile-hypochondria’. So I ended up taking the car home, having it not start again, and delivering it back to the shop with a frenzied ‘I am NOT crazy, find the problem and fix it!’ speech (because nothing comes off more sane than an ‘I am NOT crazy’ speech). The point is the mechanic finally decided the problem was most likely the starter and we scheduled the work to be done the following week. (“If it happens again in the interim, just keep trying to start it and probably it eventually will,” the mechanic told me, furthering my suspicion that the replacement of the starter was a placebo.)

So Tuesday morning, I got up at 5am so that I could be showered and dressed and have Jonas (who, let me remind you, is three years old and has occasional bouts with demonic possession, it’s sort of like occasional heart burn that flares up when you have a meatball and peppers sandwich, except occasionally his head rotates 360 degrees and he pulls the wings off butterflies) fed and ready to go to the car shop, which is 25 miles from our house. We had an appointment with the pediatrician for an ear infection check at 8:50am, and the car shop shuttle service ran at 7:30am or 9am, so we needed to be to the shop by 7 to be ready to take the 7:30 shuttle to my parents’ house (3.5 miles from the shop) so we could borrow my dad’s car for the day and head to the pediatrician’s office by 8:50. Amazingly, all of this went fairly smoothly, or at least as smoothly as wrangling a three year old in and out of vehicles (including at least 11 car seat removals and reinstalls) without him running off or getting squished by a car can. By 9:30am we were headed back to our end of town in my dad’s car to have lunch and nap and hopefully head back to pick up The GOV in the afternoon.

It wasn’t until I pulled into the driveway, with Jonas passed out in the back seat, that I realized I hadn’t taken the garage door opener out of The GOV. I had a house key, but of course, the top lock we installed on the inside of the front door to keep Jonas from getting out of the house in the middle of the night and burglarizing the neighbors, was latched, so I couldn’t even get into the house. I had no option but to turn directly around, drive the 25 miles back to the shop, wait 20 minutes for them to go back into the apparently giant room of cars waiting to be serviced and find my garage door opener (IT’S THE ORANGE ONE! Shouldn’t be that hard to find!), and then drive the 25 miles back home. I wasn’t at all considering jumping into oncoming traffic at that point, swear.

So then, when I got home, I realized I had a new voicemail on my phone (cell reception is really poor in my neighborhood, which is not at all inconvenient for someone like me who makes her living talking on the phone). Once I found the one spot in my house receiving any bars of reception and stood as still as a statue to get the voicemail, I realized it was from the negotiator at Bank of America who I’d been working with on my short sale that had closed the day before. The escrow officer working the file had sent me the final settlement statement that morning and it needed to be uploaded to the online document system so the file could be closed out. But, you know, I’d been dealing with the car/kid/garage door opener situation from hell since 5am, so I hadn’t had a second to do that yet. The negotiator was calling to tell me that BofA had received the wire with the $116,000, but had not received the final settlement statement yet, so he just wanted to inform me that if I didn’t get it uploaded in the next 3.5 seconds or so they would have to send the money back.

…? So wait, WHAT? Can we please just deconstruct that for a second? The property CLOSED ESCROW and was legally owned by the new buyer as per BofA’s instructions. The money, which was actually $100 MORE than they were expecting, had arrived in their hands. I had received my check for my work also. But because the final statement wasn’t uploaded within 0.5 minutes of the recordation, they were going to SEND THE MONEY BACK? That will really show us. Yes, Bank of America, I don’t have time to upload it today, so you can just send that wire right back. Actually, I’ll give you my account number and you can wire it right there. Thanks very much.

Plus, then my stupid car wasn’t done in the afternoon like they said it would be. But I had to drive back any way, with all three kids this time, because my dad needed his car back and we had to get a rental.

See what I mean? Black hole of crazy.

Therefore, the baked spaghetti and mozzarella I made for pre-soccer practice dinner last week fit the bill. This one is also totally from Everyday Food Magazine.

Ingredients:

2 cans of whole tomatoes
Olive oil
Fresh garlic
3/4 package of spaghetti
Fresh basil
3/4 lb mozzarella (not shredded, in a ball)

Basically, all you do is boil the spaghetti to just past crunchy (so not quite done). Puree the tomatoes in a food processor. Dice or press as much garlic as you like and saute it in the olive oil until fragrant. Add the tomatoes and simmer sauce to thicken. Cut mozzarella into little 1/2 inch cubes. Toss together the sauce, the basil (just torn into medium to small pieces), the spaghetti and half of the mozzarella and transfer it to a large baking dish. Top with the rest of the mozzarella and bake at 400 degrees for 25 minutes or so (until it’s bubbly).

Totally basic, but really clean, delicious flavors. Plus carbo-licious for the kids to have energy to burn at practice (and they actually ate it, which also doesn’t suck).

Everyone in the family is kind, polite, intelligent, analytical and generally good-natured (picky about houses, but I can put up with that when I like the people and they treat me well), but what I love most about them is that none of them does anything without consulting the other seven family members (two parents, three kids, three spouses of kids).

Any time a house looks promising, everyone gathers together and gives his or her input. None of the input is judgy or bossy and the parents actually want their kids’ thoughts and opinions on whether the house is right, or not. I find it totally heartwarming and I like to think my family is a little bit like that too (in a really sarcastic, mocking manner; that’s how we say ‘I love you’, by making fun). I also aspire to have that someday with my three boys. I love how everyone is genuinely interested in participating and always willing to drop everything and come out and take a look. They’re obviously just such a loving and strong family unit.

In the last 10 years or so, since I’ve had kids, I’ve really come to value family (and friends who I consider family, of which I have many) as the top priority in my life. I feel incredibly lucky to have my parents actively in my life, living close, and having us over whenever we want to come. I’m glad my sister lives close too and that her hubby-to-be is fabulous and takes good care of her and participates with us as family already. I’m sad that my brother and his wife have recently moved to San Francisco, but glad they still get to go on our big family vacation every year and hang out and be ridiculous for at least a week. This is what’s important and that is really all. That’s really just it. (And now I’m verklempt. Has someone spiked my water with tequila? I usually only get like this after three or four shots…)

Anyway, this lovely family that I’ve come to know and adore over the past couple of years has been going through a rough patch with some gnarly medical news recently (it involves the big C word and the matriarch, unfortunately). I believe everyone has lots of hope for a full recovery, but I know it’s not going to be an easy journey and that this must be a terrifying time for them all. I remember when my sister-in-law (my husband’s twin) was diagnosed with Lymphoma over a year and a half ago and the unmasked fear on my husband’s face. She got through it and today has been in remission for over a year, but it was awful for her and awful for us not to be able to do anything for her. She walked away from that battle a changed woman, in many ways.

The point is, this weekend a great house came on the market for them. I took a couple of the ‘kids’ (I always call them ‘the kids’ because I knew their parents first, even though they’re pretty close to my age) through and it was quickly determined that this house would more than do. So I’m currently in the market for good vibes. If you have any extra, please send them our way. I really want this to work for them and hopefully make life just a little bit easier during all of this.

And just to end on an up note; I did a video of house for them, in which, I tripped. Again. (Their daughter said, “It’s OK, Elizabeth, it wouldn’t be a video from you if you didn’t fall down at least once.)

Of course, both of these things are open to interpretation. It’s not always as easy as just posting a new listing to every website you can find. I have a theory about marketing my properties that I’ve been working for the last 10 months or so that lots of agents would probably disagree with (or at least mock). But that doesn’t matter, because so far, it’s worked.

My theory is this: the text and photo captions on the MLS listings are so dry and meaningless that most people searching just blip over them. Buyers and agents just flip through listings glancing at photos and blip right over the text we listing agents slave over. There’s really only so many ways you can say ‘This house is splendiferoius!’ (Also? Most aren’t.)

So I’ve been attempting to spice up my descriptions in order to make them eye catching and memorable. Perfect punctuation and grammar isn’t going to get you a second look, but my theory is that maybe this will:

This house is so awesome there is no way I’m going to be able to sufficiently describe its greatness in the space provided here. I should just give up. You should just come see it. OK, I’ll give it a try, but in order to conserve space I’m going to omit all proper sentence structure and just give you key phrases of fabulousness: Mountain Park Ranch, corner lot, 2.5 car epoxy floor garage, vaulted ceilings, newish roof, newish Trane A/C, stainless steel appliances, tile throughout (except bedrooms), big walk-in closet in master, move-in ready, granite counters in kitchen, kitchen island, lots of light, well cared for, neutral paint, shed on side of the house, koi pond, low HOA fees, great community pools, NORMAL SALE (sellers actually have equity and will act reasonably!), whoops, ran out of spa

Of course it was raining the day this photo was taken. You know, like the only day it has rained this year. So picture this lovely house with a blue sky behind, because that's how it looks the other 364 days.

You know having 'mountain views' is something of a status symbol here? 'Oh, yes, I have MOUNTAIN VIEWS from my front drive, do you?'

And look, TWO different mountain views! That's like practically the Rolls Royce of mountain views.

Granite counters and stainless appliances, not bad at all. (OK, it's granite tile, not slab. But it's not that lousy job of granite tile with the thick grout. It's the classy thin grout granite tile. Still awesome.)

You may love the curtains, but you can't have them, the sellers are taking them with. They'll fight you to the death for them; these curtains are like another child. (Kidding. Sort of. They're taking the curtains.)

It's a bedroom incognito. The bedroom is disguised as an office. But don't worry, there's a closet, it's really a bedroom.

Isn't that a pretty string of lights on this cute patio? I know, it is. But you can't have those either. Still a nice patio, though

Nice big lot. You can barely see that koi pond off in the distance there. Wait, there's a koi pond???

Yep, how rad is that, a koi pond! Hi, fishy, fishy!

And totally not a lame 'takes up the whole yard and would be a total waste for someone not interested in caring for fish' kinda koi pond. Nope, this one's off in the corner, so it could be easily disposed of for someone who's not the 'koi pond' type (although I don't know who those people are, koi ponds are awesome!).

Because all you really want is your house to stick out enough in a buyer’s head for them to want to walk through the door, then the house has to tell its own story.

By the way, if you’re in the market for an Ahwatukee cutie like this one (4/2/2.5, 1833 sqft, $237K), email me! We just listed this one today!

I’m back to dashing from appointment to appointment during the day and then slogging through computer work at night. I was starting to get used to only really working at all during the day, when my brain is at its peak of clarity. Now that I no longer have that luxury I’m sending emails to lenders berating them for lagging docs and using the phrase, ‘pins and noodles’. You know, that my poor buyers are waiting on. It’s a sad, wet, occasionally sharp, but mostly slimy situation.

So the point is, I’ve been searching for fast and easy family food fare so that my kids can still get a home cooked meal and I don’t just stick my head in the oven while I’m slaving over it due to the added stress. Thus, speaking of noodles:

Chicken Noodle Soup

I got this recipe from Everyday Food (which, yes, is where I get lots of my dinners). It was super easy and the kids loved it.

8 cups of water
8 cups of chicken broth
4 carrots, sliced
Bag of frozen peas
¾ lb of spaghetti
4 chicken breasts with bone and skin on
4 chicken thighs with bone and skin on
Salt and pepper

Boil the broth and water in a giant pot. Toss in the chicken and boil till chicken is cooked through (about 18 minutes did it for me). Tong out the chicken (yes, I just created a verb) and put it on a plate in the fridge for 10 minutes. Throw carrots in for 10 minutes. Break spaghetti into small pieces and toss it in for 8 more minutes. Take out the chicken and remove skin and bones and shred. Toss frozen peas and shredded into the pot and boil till everything is up to temp. Salt and pepper to taste.

I’m not even normally a fan of chicken noodle soup, but this homemade version was yum and a half. I even ate it for lunch the next day.

One agent, in particular, has had a hard time of it lately. When I asked her if she’d ever considered trying to get another job she told me she actually used to be an engineer and a pretty successful one. But she’s been out of that field long enough that she’d have to start from the very bottom rung. Plus, interestingly enough, she said, ‘I really do like real estate. I really like what I do, and I want to make it work.’ And that is why I like these people. The stories we have to tell contain some harsh realities that we have to deal with on a daily basis. We are a sarcastic, somewhat jaded bunch. All in all, however, we have a cheerful outlook on what we do. We’re here because we want to be.

That doesn’t mean we don’t constantly reevaluate our lives and our decision to be in real estate. Or maybe that’s just me. I’m a constant reevaluator of everything, though, so it’s nothing different. To feel confident with where I am and what I’m doing, I need to know the score at all times. So here is the Pros and Cons list I run through whenever I get stressed about my next paycheck or exhausted by the long hours and time away from my family:

Cons:

Sometimes I have to show property for 8 hours in 112 degree heat and then come home and do 5 hours of computer/paper work (but then again, I can drink wine while doing it).

Occasionally I go months with no paycheck (not at all stress-inducing, swear).

I am often spending time and energy for which I will never see a dime (check out this video by Kristin LaVanway of how it would go if Realtors were paid hourly).

People assume I’m a scumbag in a scumbag career.

No vacations (except the ones I can write off as business expenses… what? I looked at houses there! Out of the corner of my eye while I was lying on the beach…).

No health insurance benefits (this one makes me cry a little bit).

Clients call me on Mother’s Day pretty regularly and say, ‘I know it’s a holiday, but I really need to see this house today’.

Failure to complete a deal is usually not my fault, but always results in a lack of paycheck for me.

Pros:

I get to make professional calls while wearing flannel jammie pants covered in tiny pink rosebuds and a t-shirt that says ‘sake two me’.

In theory I could totally make a bajillion dollars this year if I tried really hard (although I’ve been trying really hard for five years).

I get to be home to gather my kids from their various school activities (wait, was this one a pro or a con?).

I get to work with my friends and family on a regular basis (again, I’m getting into the gray pro vs. con territory here. Kidding! Always use me!).
I get to hear people’s life stories (I’m a total voyeur, I love that stuff).

I don’t have a boss-man who can call me and yell at me to do something right now! If a client does that to me, I always have the option of firing him.

I get to see super rad houses (like the one in Fountain Hills with the Monet).

It’s no ‘same crap, day in, day out’ job. Sure, the lows are depressing, but the highs are fantastic.

If I really, really, a lot, don’t want to work today, I can just not answer my phone. Sure, I might lose a client or two, but I won’t get ‘fired’ from the business. I would never actually do this, but it’s nice to always have it in the back of my mind as an option.

It makes me super-duper happy to hand over keys to a buyer who cannot wait to move into that house.

So there you go. It’s pretty clear why I always end up back at the ‘of course I want to be in real estate’ camp. I do love it. No job is perfect, but mine is pretty perfect for me.

How Sorry I Am That Scratch n Sniff Computer Screens Haven’t Been Invented Yet On a Scale of 1 to 10: 10

I’m absolutely guilty of the old adage, ‘don’t judge a book by its cover,’ at least in the literal sense. As a kid I pretty much felt naked unless I had at least one novel touching my body at all time (well, and up through college, until I sprouted these three appendages named Bennett, Gray and Jonas who are totally adverse to anything involving the phrases ‘mom’s hobby’ or ‘mom’s free-time’) . I read anything and everything, so I would regularly walk into a bookstore or library and just run my hands over the spines and pluck out anything with an interesting title or cover art. I wasn’t worried about wasting my time on something lousy. I was willing to try anything.

It would seem like applying this principle to real estate would actually afford you more success than in literature. A book’s title and cover art really has almost nothing to do with the story printed inside, but the photos of a house on the MLS are actually pictures of what you’d see in person, right? Ah… no. You’d think that, and it would be a reasonable assumption. And yet, you’d be completely and totally wrong.

I almost never look at photos of houses I’m showing and I caution my clients against choosing what they want to see or not see based completely on the pictures. Some agents are excellent photographers (or hire excellent photographers) and make a house look much better than it will actually feel in person, and some do a ridiculously poor job of showcasing a lovely listing. Not to mention the fact that much of what is good or bad about a house, and in general the thing you can’t alter after purchase, is the feel of the space, which is pretty much impossible to capture in 2-D.

So last week I should have known I was in for it when I picked a group of houses to show a new client and I put some weight on what I chose based on the photos. Do as I SAY, not as I DO, dummy.

This new client was a doctor in town from California looking for an investment property. I hadn’t met him in person before, so I was looking to impress him with my awesome Realtor skilz so that he would feel confident working with me in the future. This was really just a first time ‘seeing the layout of the land’ trip out to Phoenix and I knew he wouldn’t be ready to pull the trigger this trip, but he wanted to see properties in a particular price range that were mostly move-in ready. It’s not often up to me to determine which properties we are viewing (usually my clients choose what they are interested in viewing from the internet search I set up for them), but this time he needed guidance about areas and different types of properties, so it was on my shoulders to present a lovely tour of Metro-Phoenix properties.

I cast my net wide and looked through all of the listings, picking out ones that were newer or had been remodeled and then glanced through the pictures to make sure I was on the right track. I tossed the ones that looked sketchy and kept the ones that appeared modern and cared for. I ordered my showings in a sort of circular manner starting closest to his hotel and I was feeling pretty confident with listing number one. It was in a nice neighborhood, built in the last 5 years, priced well and the pictures looked great:

Right? Not bad at all. Granite, stainless steel appliances, wood-like floors, two car garage. Can’t go wrong. So imagine my surprise and horror when I opened the door (which looked, by the way, like it had been crow-barred open in the recent past) to reveal a stench so pungent it forced me to take a step back and cover my mouth and nose before entering. Like you know that rolling cloud of flies and stink that engulfs that poor kid, Pigpen (who IS his mother, by the way, she should be reported to CPS) from Peanuts? This smell practically looked like that and answered the door to greet us.

And that wasn’t all. Of course not. The photographer (who apparently wasn’t shy. Hi Mr. Realtor! You’re not supposed to be in the picture!) had managed to avoid the obvious water-damage in the ceiling throughout the first floor. Paint was bubbled up and dried in at least 3 places and there was a huge square of drywall cut out of part of the ceiling.

Now, yes, I’m a girly girl. I like my sparkle and have my pretty outfits and awesome boots, etc., but I am not a total wuss. I’m a mom and I’ve seen enough ‘gross’ at home that I’ve become a little bit immune. In general, my sense of curiosity is more robust than my gag reflex. So even though this house smelled awful and was obviously in disrepair, my client and I climbed the steps to the second story.

The smell was obviously getting stronger the higher we went. We did a quick check of the two bedrooms and bathrooms on the second floor and found crusted brown guck in the master tub. I wondered, for a second if the previous owner had left a present in one of the toilets up there (no, I didn’t have the guts to look), but I’ve decided that couldn’t have been the culprit. There was still one story to investigate and as we got halfway up the stairs, it became clear the smell was only getting worse. At that point I was literally holding my breath. When my client turned to me and said, “I think we should get out of here,” I realized my curiosity would have to go unsatisfied. My guess is that something died in the walls and was rotting in the Phoenix heat.

Suffice it to say when we got into the car to travel to the next property I was shaken and fairly horrified at my choice of first impressions for the new client. It didn’t help that the only note he took on the listing sheet I gave him was ‘SMELL’.

Luckily, it was the only stinker of the day and we finished up with some better properties. I think I’d actually prefer that it started like that rather than leaving a bad taste in his mouth at the end of the day (you know, literally).

Point being: Pictures? Don’t mean a thing.

I think this has been going very well, especially for the last six weeks or so, during which I’ve been posting consistently twice a week. But, in general, I’m a total spaz, and I have decided that it might be even better if I posted THREE times a week. I know this sounds like it’s a pretty reasonable goal. It’s only one more time a week for goodness sake. And there’s plenty of bloggers who post daily or multiple times a day. But I’m having some anxiety about getting together three real estate related posts (and mine tend to be ridiculously long, I can’t help it, I’m verbally bloated, they should make a pill for it) every week. It’s stressing me out. I’m having dreams about spiders and the spiders are are all wearing shoes made of laptop keys and if I’m not funny and relevant on cue they’ll bite me and my arm will get a hole in it that will turn green until my arm falls off.

So the point is, I’ve decided to bring back my food posts once a week. Because then I can just take pictures of my lunch and be done with it. (OK, I’ll put more effort into it than that. Unless it’s a really good lunch sprinkled with 24 karat gold truffle shavings or something.) I really do enjoy cooking and sharing recipes. And bacon. I definitely enjoy bacon.

Thus, going forward you can expect from me:

Monday – Post with Real Estate content (injected with humor using one of those meat marinade needles)

Wednesday – Post with Food Porn

Friday – Post with Real Estate content (sprinkled with 24 karat gold humor shavings)

Those of you freaks who don’t like food or reading about food can just not come around on Wednesdays. And those of you who think real estate is lame and boring and I’m not funny… well, then you should probably just stay away anyway. In fact, you’re no longer invited over here. I’m *not* crying. You shut up.

And to kick things off, Pictures Of My Lunch:

I totally just made this up!

OK, I was inspired by an article in Everyday FOOD this month about making little pizzas and various other things in muffin tins. But the tortilla part was totally my idea. And the filling (leftover shredded pork and cheddar).

Sorta like a snowcone holder.

Squish the little cups into the muffin tin and fill with whatever sounds yum. *Tip: Meat and cheese is always yum.

Topped with a raw egg and baked at 375 degrees for 22 minutes.

Removed from the muffin tin all crispy and melty, and topped with avocado, sour cream and hot sauce.

Creative lunch makes the world feel less black and heartless on those black and heartless kind of days.

During these stretches of time when I feel the need to Fabreeze the driver’s seat of the GOV weekly to ward against ass-sweat-aroma and I’ve started stock-piling granola bars and wasabi-flavored almonds in the center console so that I don’t keel over from the three sets of back-to-back showings and lack of a lunch break, I daydream constantly about the idea of a weekend off. I arrive home Saturday night to the telltale punched-in-the-eyes look my middle son always gets when he’s spent the day at the pool and what I know I missed out on makes me a little weepy. If I could only have ONE DAY where my phone doesn’t ring, I don’t get any flaming emergency emails and I don’t have to show any property; one day to catch up on laundry, groceries and couch cuddling.

But then, of course, things inevitably slow up. My buyers go under contract or go inactive, my listings get sold and new ones don’t immediately appear to take their places. Ebb and flow, ebb and flow. I relish the quiet and enjoy my new freedom for about 3.5 seconds. I’m a mom and a wife and we have clean clothes to wear and my cats have stopped hissing at me like I’m the stranger in the house. And then I start to wonder if maybe something’s wrong with my phone. I call it a couple of times just to verify it still rings.

This is inevitably where the crazy starts to creep in. Instead of enjoying the time while I have it to do the things I love to do like cook and quilt and play with the wild chimpanzees I call my children, I begin to brood. I start to think about how I have nothing in escrow and I’m probably never going to have anything in escrow again. From there it’s a quick trip down ‘I’m going to lose my house and move in with my parents’ lane. Eventually I decide I probably need to get another job. This sets off a new panic as I haven’t done anything but real estate for a long long time and the country is in a recession. Probably even Walmart won’t hire me.
That’s when I begin to brainstorm things I could sell on Etsy. Capri pants made out of Pokemon cards? The kids have tons of those just sitting around in boxes upstairs, they probably won’t miss them… Ooo, I know, toothpaste sculptures your cat can lick to make her breath minty fresh! I have 18 tubes of toothpaste upstairs I got free from couponing, I can totally make that one work, and it’s marketable!

Eventually Jason’s tied me up and medicated me to get me to calm down about our financial state and my up and down career. I usually begin to mellow and start to enjoy life again right about when the phone starts ringing. “Can you show me 34 houses tomorrow in Desert Ridge? And then 26 in San Tan Valley?”

Someday I’ll learn to expect the slow and enjoy the moment. Probably not soon, though. Say a little prayer for my husband’s sanity, won’t you please?

People regularly ask me about the worst houses I’ve ever been in and there’s a couple that always come to mind. There was the one that had one of those creepy wood and rusty re-bar structures covering the pool that the banks used to do to keep neighborhood kids from drowning in the pools of abandoned houses. The pool covering structure was covered in flies and smelled of death. Being a lover of Stephen King novels, I was immediately convinced there was a body stashed under there and a nefarious situation connected. I hustled my clients out of there (not that it took much hustling, they were as disturbed as I was) and called the listing agent. He called me back the next day to report his findings of a dead fish stinking up the pool. Not quite as dramatic as I was imagining, but still super weird.

The other house I think of, that I will probably always consider ‘the worst house I’ve ever shown’ was a bizarre ramshackle ranch in South Scottsdale, too close to the 101 to be considered even older nice Scottsdale. I showed this gem to my BFF (yes, I’m 32 and I still have someone I think of as my BFF) and her husband. He’s super handy and she’s very creative, so they were looking for a fixer in a good neighborhood. This one already failed the ‘good neighborhood’ criteria with its excessively close proximity to the Red Door Saloon (or whatever the dark, creepy bar like 10 steps away from this house was called), but we had gotten all the way there, so we decided to take a look anyway. I have mentally blocked out most of the details of this house because it was so very dark, disturbing, run down and horrible, but basically, it was built in the late 60s and mostly original except for several strange structures built in the backyard that we were fairly convinced someone had used to hold dog fights. It was NOT OK.

Anyway, back to the property I showed Sunday. As I say in the following video, it was up there:

The inside was also gross, cluttered and horrible, but in a slightly more pedestrian manner. There’s only so many bedrooms with kitty litter ground into the carpet, sinks covered in hair and toilets that appear to have never been flushed in their entire existence you can see before they become a little ‘meh’.

But that back yard. Just wow. I really have to wonder about the kind of person who would smoke that many cigarettes without ever bothering to put them in a trash can, but yet would go to the amount of trouble it would take to hang a dripping system of Christmas lights intertwined with fake vines in what I can only assume was an attempt to create ambiance.

One thing I can say about my job: it’s almost never boring. Smelly, yes. Boring, hardly ever.