I really don’t know if an actual post is necessary after that title line, but here goes.  This is a hard situation to explain without going on and on and on, but … I’ve had the most stressful two months in real estate that I’ve ever had.  Ever.  One major source of stress has been a transaction with an 83-year-old seller, whose belligerent nephew is co-trustee of her property.  She hadn’t sold a house in twenty years, and it was a steep learning curve for her.  The nephew fancies himself a high roller, and would call me from Idaho (where he lives) every so often to tell me what I was doing wrong and how I was cheating his aunt.  We’re still in a strong buyers’ market, and this house was a fixer.  I listed it at the perfect price, and it sold fairly quickly.  (Incidentally, one reason I’m sure it was the perfect price is that the competing realtor, who didn’t get the listing, gave the seller the exact same price, and she’s a very smart realtor whom I respect completely.)

The realtor on the other end of the transaction, whom I’ll call Brigid, was an escapee from the fools’ brigade.  She didn’t notify me when her client changed lenders in the middle of the transaction, which pushed our closing out by a week.  Then, she gave a copy of the inspection report to the underwriter, which is a major no-no.  The underwriter then decided that several thousand dollars’ worth of repairs needed to be made to a house that we’d wanted to sell as-is.  Through an incredible miracle of spin doctoring, I managed to talk the underwriter back out of this.  This caused another week’s delay.  Then the buyer had to go out of town for a professional conference, and couldn’t sign documents, so we’re out yet another week.  It was in the seller’s best interests to try to get this deal closed, as a sale fail is the kiss of death, especially on a house like this that’s had a lot of stuff come up on an inspection.  By law, you have to disclose all known defects to the buyer, so once you have an inspection, you know about a lot of defects you weren’t aware of before.  This inevitably impacts the price that the house will sell for when it goes back on after a sale fail.  It took me two hours in conference with the seller, her nephew, his wife, and some other guy whom I didn’t know in order to coax the seller to do the right thing for herself, which was to give this deal enough time to close.  It closed today, which was nothing short of miraculous.

So I called the seller to tell her congratulations, and she started asking me why we hadn’t sold the house for more, and why we’d agreed to any repairs, and wait a minute, her neighbor would have bought the house without asking for repairs … and she hadn’t really fully understood anything that had happened.  This was news to me, as I’d explained it to her meticulously, and we’d had back-and-forth conversations that sure seemed like she was getting it.  I was really poleaxed by this.  As always, I started second-guessing myself.  Had I cheated this old lady?  I was under the impression that I’d sweated bullets and wept blood in order to get her what she needed, and to do the right thing for her.  I felt pretty low about this, as it’s impossible for me to retain any sense that I’ve done a good job once someone tells me I didn’t.  I know how overwrought I was about this deal, and everything I had to do to make up for the other realtor’s mistakes.  I even cut my commission by $2000 to pay for the faulty electrical panel to be replaced, since the property had sold quickly enough to save me a lot of money in advertising expenses.  But I guess I didn’t do a good job after all.

While I was in this state of mind, I got a call from Brigid, who informed me that although I’d provided a key for the front door, the screen door to the property was locked, and the buyer was “really pissed.”  I was on my way to a chamber music concert, to which I had some fairly expensive tickets.  I just shouldn’t have answered the phone, but … that was my stupid fault.  Then the buyer called me to tell me that she was really pissed, that she wanted access to the property Right Now.  I told her, truthfully, that I had no idea the screen door even had a key.  I called the seller, who said it was impossible for the screen door to be locked … the movers had been in and out this morning, and the only person who had a key was her, and she hadn’t been over there to lock the door.  I checked my watch.  There was no way I could get out to her retirement home to get the key, and still make the concert.  I called the buyer back and explained this, and told her that the seller was about a ten minute drive away, if she wanted to meet the seller and get the key.  Just to give a little perspective, this stupid shit happens all the time.  One of my buyers showed up at a property with her moving van on Christmas Eve, only to find that the seller had left town and taken all the keys with him.  Another of my buyers, just this week, opened her new garage to find twenty years’ worth of Christmas kitcsch still there.  A seller of mine moved her washing machine, and in the process, broke a huge pipe … on the morning when the buyers were supposed to move in.  Life isn’t completely predictable.  It wasn’t that unreasonable of me to suggest that the buyer drive ten minutes to pick up a key, particularly since she wasn’t even moving anything in yet.

However, she felt that it was completely unreasonable.  I can’t even begin to describe her tone.  She told me I had no right to a personal life, and that I should leave the concert and go get the key; that it wasn’t her problem I had some “asshole intellectual” thing planned for my evening.  She told me that I was thoughtless, a terrible realtor, and a terrible person.  She told me that she had already called my office manager and my title company to tell them how unprofessional and careless I was.  She reminded me that she is a first time buyer who had paid nearly half a million for her house (well, it was actually $400K, but evidently she felt inclined to round up) and that it was inexcusable that she couldn’t get in.  If I didn’t get her that key by tomorrow at noon, she’d sue me.

Of course she has no basis whatsoever to sue me, but I was really upset.  I don’t handle angry people very well, and I was already in a pretty fragile state of mind.  There was no way I could possibly enjoy the concert now, so I called the seller to ask if I could come over and get the key.  The seller told me there was no key … she’d looked, and it didn’t exist.  I was shaking so badly with frustration and anger that I probably shouldn’t have been driving, but nevertheless, I drove over to the house.  The buyer had already left.  And with one try, I opened the locked screen door, which hadn’t been locked at all … it was just stuck, having swelled a little in today’s humid weather.  I stuck two catalogs in the door to hold it open, and called the buyer.  Of course, she didn’t answer her phone, but you can probably imagine the substance of the message I left.  It wasn’t the message I wanted to leave, which would have been Thanks a lot, you stupid fucking bitch, for ruining my entire life. I realize that would have been a little over the top.

But I think I’ve had as much as I can take for one day of people telling me I’m a terrible person who doesn’t know how to do my job.  Maybe I need another job, where I’m not such a terrible person.