Range of Emotions

Now that’s a day in Real Estate, Ottawa style!  

The day started like most others in this business, waking up not knowing what to expect…turning your phone on before the morning coffee to see if there are any new leads or loose ends…then, time to relax, at least for me anyways.   My weekday mornings are quite lazy as I sit around the home and decide whether to play Tiger Woods golf or Monopoly on the PS3, lately the board game has won most days.  Once I make that decision I like to settle in with a Tassimo coffe and my Country Classics music in the background, lounging out on the couch…for about an hour.  Then I’ll normally start to get ready for work or if I’m already showered and cleaned up start to work on the laptop. 

The Laptop

So…I’m the PROUDPOP (which incidentally is my license plate) of two girls, Brianna is 9 and Kierra is 6.   We have almost every toy a kid could ask for, thanks to my shopping habits, and yet they will always fight over one thing…the laptop.   They love to play dress up Barbie girls on websites like y8.com and girlsgogames.com so there’s always 1 of them asking to use the laptop.  As a family we used to have two laptops - one for my wife and one for my work.  Well, after the girls played non-stop on my wifes laptop, guess what?  It broke.  
Now we are down to one in the house (I know, how can we survive) and it just happens to be mine.  I use my laptop for everything work related as I build and maintain all of my own websites and social media marketing.  I’m actually on it quite a bit…but it seems like so are the girls.  So, guess what?  Its almost broke! 

Back to the Day…

Yes, sorry for veering off topic.   After my morning at the house, I drove to my office…6 minutes away.  The minute I walked through the door it started – phone calls, emails and questions about one of my listings which will host an offer presentation tomorrow night at 4:30.   By all accounts there will be alot of negotiations and the home will most likely sell well above asking price.  This is a good thing for both my Vendors, who will hopefully be thrilled by the outcome, and also for Capital Homes who is able to host a busy, busy offer presentation at rush hour on a weekday.  Anyways, regardless of the sale price the learning experience has been tremendous for me and I’ve done my best to maintain contact with the 40-some Realtors who have expressed interest in the home. 

Then…just as it seemed I was ready to call it a day and head back home to my family (yes, so they can play on my laptop) I was out with another client showing a semi detached bungalow in a central part of Ottawa.  Really nice home with a great property and a ton of upgrades.   The listing Realtor did a good job himself of managing the traffic through the home over the last weekend and we found ourselves in a multiple offer presentation…for the second time with this Buyer.   Our strategy was an agressive 6% over asking with just an inspection as a condition and giving the Sellers their ideal completion date.  This quickly turned into 6.5%, then 7% and finally 7.5% over asking, all within a 1 hour period of negotiations.  In the end, my Buyer lost the deal over a couple of thousand dollars.  Both her and I felt horrible, and we spent the rest of the night discussing our next chance at Buying and how we can do things different to help her get the home. 

Emotional Workplace

Real Estate is really an emotional job, especially if you work with your clients over time and have a good relationship with them, which I am fortunate to have with most of my clients.  You can understand exactly what they want and need to have the professionalism to help them find it while understanding their reasons for either the purchase or the sale.  When it goes well, like the ensuing bidding war I’m hosting tomorrow night or when it goes bad, like the multiple offer ‘dog fight’ we lost on tonight, it really does pull at your heart strings. 

Yet another reason I love my job.  Now, if I can just get a new laptop at home…I’d be set.

Until next time…thanks for reading.