The first house I never sold was on James Island. It was the first house I bought all by myself when I moved to Charleston and was teaching on John’s Island at the time. It was perfect. It was a prime location. It had just been remodeled so I didn’t have to put in any ‘sweat equity’. The pictures were AWFUL on the MLS so I did not have to compete against any other offers (though I had done so many times when this one finally came along) allowing me to stick to my budget . My Dad was in Real Estate and helped me get connected with a Realtor in the Charleston area who helped me make this purchase. That agent was very knowledgeable about the market, charismatic not in a sales-y way, and actually gave me printed copies of each contract we wrote at my request because the DocuSign thing was somewhat intimidating. Although I had those printed copies I still had questions. I really wanted to ask that Realtor to explain “Earnest Money” to me again, but I felt like I couldn’t because he had a family and seemed busy. That right there was the first lesson I have applied to my own business. I am available to you for ALL of the questions and concerns. Like I used to tell my students, “you’re here to learn, not to know- that’s my job”.   

Fast forward through awkward Tinder dates, navigating the public education system, and finding “my people” in Charleston. BOOM I’m an official Tinder-ella. I’m happily married and we now want to start a family, maybe the first planned Tinder Family. My husband and I knew that the James Island house would be too tight if we wanted to bring a baby home there. We had a dog, a cat, a rescued hedgehog, some geckos, and a snake. Not to mention there was no counter space, where would we put bottles?  It was time statistically and realistically, we needed to move. We had a goal of keeping the James Island house so we could rent it out to have additional income, but we knew what it was potentially worth thanks to Zillow and our “Zestimate”  (You will never hear me hate on Zillow). At that point we talked about using a Realtor, but I didn’t want the pressure and I didn’t want to make the decision of who to use. By that time we knew of a few other Realtor friends and there was my original first time Realtor. We knew we would be hurting someone’s feelings eventually.  Thus, another lesson I apply to my business, I am not for everyone. I can’t be if I want to be present for my family and be the best for the clients I choose to work with. There are so many amazing realtors out there. I want to work with people who want to work with me. We both get to choose each other. 

We ended up making a big mistake though. Actually, many mistakes that second time being home Buyers. We drove by a house, fell in love with the look of it, and clicked on that button on Zillow that says something about “Go See This House”. My phone immediately blew up and of the 97895748 agents who called, our next Realtor showed up to open the door for us. The current homeowners, Lynn and Lenny, were at the house. They had had so many showings they didn’t feel like leaving their home anymore. We understood that (not really) but used it as an opportunity to ask allllll the questions we could think of. How do you like Johns Island? Where did the flood waters rise to in the yard? How much is your insurance policy? How many chickens do you have here? (12, they had 12 chickens. We inherited them with the house and decided to never go back to store bought eggs). We knew the house was for us, Lynn and Lenny knew the house was for us. We made a ridiculously low offer knowing how long the house had been off and on the market without selling, their motivation for selling, and doing a little research on Zillow about the area prices. But we did all of that research on our own, our Realtor never provided us with comps of the area, and market statistics that he had access to from the MLS. We just picked a number that seemed to make sense and suited us and our budget. Sort of, this house put us in the position of having to sell our James Island house.  That was fine, but we knew we had a ton of work to do.  

Lynn and Lenny accepted our offer contingent upon us listing and selling our James Island house. Big legal words and forms were added to our contract that we did not read or understand, but a concept that was broadly explained and understood. It was a hot seller’s market so for them to agree to that was wild. It was also Mother’s Day weekend, and my precious mother spent that weekend helping us clean and declutter the James Island house. When she was done working her magic it was immaculate and adorable, so much so that we considered just staying. But like previously mentioned, where would we put baby stuff if we decided to grow our family? At the time, I didn’t know what we were doing to the house was called “staging”. That was another significant aspect of selling our house that our realtor did not have any statistics or research about. Thus, a new hobby and passion was born. A few years later I would earn my Accredited Staging Professional designation. If you are considering selling your property you will absolutely hear me tell you about the statistics and reasons why you should definitely stage your home, to some degree, before putting it on the market. The James Island house had 5 offers within 8 hours that were all significantly over our “crazy” asking price. Thank you Mom! 

Holy moly I keep writing and there is still more to the story, because, due diligence on Lynn and Lenny’s house. Wow I might have become a realtor just to finally attempt to understand the “due diligence period”. Were we going to lose our money or not? Were we going to have to buy this house or not? What if a better house came on the market that we wanted to buy instead? But really, were we going to lose our money? Could they legally FORCE us to buy this house? All of those questions went unanswered until we got the inspection report back. See image below… 

Our inspector was a doomsday kind of guy. Jordan loved him because he was thorough. He made me nervous because he made me believe that he was surprised the house was still standing. Everything was broken. Everything was leaking. Everything was a safety hazard. (None of that was true but that is how I FELT). I couldn’t even get through the whole report before I called our agent wanting to get out of buying this house. What was it going to cost? Our earnest money? Fine. Just get me outta here. (It should not have cost us anything, we were still in due diligence). My trust was broken with Lynn and Lenny too. There was a whole pipe under the house that was not connected to anything, just dumping water into the crawl space. How could anyone miss that? What else did they lie about or not disclose? I don’t even know how I was convinced to proceed with the purchase. Maybe Jordan calmed me down enough to think advantageously. Maybe we got “realtor-ed”. Maybe we renegotiated the purchase price even lower-yeah, that sounds right. Or maybe it was all of those options. But somehow I was reminded of all of the reasons why we fell in love with the house to begin with, and it was finally ours. It is not our “forever home”, but it is our perfect “right now” home.     

 Why did we even use that realtor, because he gave us a discount, and had access to the MLS, that was all. I am not a discount broker, I do have a client reward program I can tell you more about during a consultation, the value and service I provide will be worth my full commission. That includes but is not limited to, recommending great non-doomsday inspectors, providing staging services applicable to your unique situation, access to knowledgeable lenders with teacher spirits, thorough contract knowledge with the patience and experience to explain each aspect as many times as you need.   

The End..or really Beginning