This afternoon I experienced another first. I had the best and most difficult real estate transaction. I was the listing agent and encountered one of the mostdedicated buyers agents ever in Pat Avis. She is a school teacher at Jenks and has sold real estate for several years. Through a series of events, I sold Sarrah Groves home on Oxford Place to Pat’s buyers, Stuart and Kelley Ratliff.
What made the transaction so difficult was a difficult real estate appraiser. The role of the appraiser is to protect the interest of the bank in any transaction. The thing about this house is it was in great shape for a home built in the eighties. No roof issues, no issues with the structural, and the A/C worked fine. A few events happened that caused the financing company order the appraiser to come back out to the home. Apparently, he did not like that. So, in a careless moment he asked to see the home inspection report, then he required that every tiny item on it to be addressed before the house could close. This is very unreasonable and not a common practice.
Pat and I had already worked to hard to see this one through. It was so disappointing. The home owners would have to come up with in excess of $3500 in repairs which they did not have. The buyers would have to go back to market and honestly this house was perfect for them. That is where Pat and I teamed up in a situation that is often adversarial.
I engaged WhiteTree Company to handle some of the repairs. The buyers took a huge risk in agreeing to pay for repairs prior to the home being in their name. Everything got done for under $1500. We had to document everything. We had to work lock step together. We had to overcome obstacles. It was intense.
This evening we closed on the home. There were huge smiles. The buyers were so happy and the closing was more like a party. It was risky and we took a path that is normally not recommended BUT when people of character put their heads together, great things happen!!!
The sellers were in Colorado. All of it was done remotely. There were dicey tax consideration. Crazy pitfalls left and right. Sometimes selling a house is seemingly easy but in reality there are so many opportunities for disappointment. Loved working with them all. A real team effort. And even the buyers who were not represented by me want to give us a glowing review of our work!