With a View

Inspirational song: If I Had $1,000,000 (Barenaked Ladies)

Maybe it's a by-product of moving so many times (33 times total, until this place, where I plan to stay until I die), but every time I tour a house with a client, I see it from the perspective of how I would feel if I were the one house-shopping again. That feeling is amplified when I'm in a place for a couple of hours, holding an open house. I have time to really ruminate on a layout, make major structural changes in my mind, keep or toss existing decor, and picture how I would use each room. It's easy to switch to different eras in my life, at different points on the economic ladder and with different space requirements as my family members went through their own evolutions. With smaller, more modest homes, I can remember being young college students or parents of preschoolers with impossibly tight budgets. In bigger, sprawling houses, I think about how nice it was when we all had decent incomes and my then-teenagers had their own interests and schedules. Rarely I walk into a house that I just couldn't tolerate living in, even for a few months. Today, I was in a property that wasn't really my decorating style, but the space itself was so compelling, I would have loved to spend a few years there, remodeling and redecorating, and enjoying the expansive reach of the place.

This property was listed by one of my fellow brokers. She had put out a request to several of us to hold open houses, because this one was going to be a trick to sell. It was perfectly nice enough, it just holds a spot in an extremely specific niche. It was a 10 acre horse property in the foothills of the mountains, with a price tag to match its location and sprawl. It was tucked back off of a dirt road, with a hidden driveway. It overlooked a reservoir that looked like it was tucked up against the back property boundary, but was actually more like a quarter of a mile away. It had a big horse barn, a rugged riding arena, and a salt water swimming pool. It was a neat place that just needs a little updating and customizing for the right family. Oh, how I would enjoy having the energy to fix it up right. Alas, it will not be for me to make changes to it.

The location made it hard to get a big crowd to the open house. Plus, my fellow agents and I were the third or fourth group to hold one up there in the last 10 days. We only had a few people through the door. Not a lot of takers for the snack table we laid out, so we stood around and drank coffee and talked about sports and real estate, like you do. If I'm lucky, some of the people I'm working with will want to take a look at it. The right buyer is out there somewhere.