The emotional, human side of selling real estate is what makes it interesting, brings value to what we do. It is an important time for people and, as agents, we get to know and help buyers and sellers at a significant point in their lives.
And you get to know all sorts of people; the good, the bad, the powerful, the wounded, the clever, the fastidious, the generous, the not-so generous, the hard-working, the rich, the battlers … and that was just the buyers and sellers of the first house I ever sold. Not really, but you get what I mean.
A few years ago I sold a unit to a lady called Susan Nitz. Susan worked at Coles in Sydney Street and had saved hard to be able to buy her first home, a nice little two-bedroom unit.
Susan was single, in her 50s and lived a simple life; she enjoyed music, loved her cat, had a close and loving bond with her mother and had warm friendships with the customers and colleagues she knew at Coles.
She was a gentle, kind soul who saw the best in everyone and loved to help them. I really enjoyed selling her the property because it was so important to her and she was such a nice person. She had lots of questions and concerns and I was pleased to ease her through it all and hand over the keys to a delighted buyer.
A couple of years later Susan became ill and, sadly, died earlier this year. She was brave and stoic and didn’t tell people what she was going through. Even her mother, Ethel, didn’t know about her illness until its late stages.
Her passing hit Ethel hard. The two of them shared a bond, partly through their love of country music, and had lived together for years. A mother shouldn’t have to bury her daughter. It rips your heart out.
It was left to Ethel to look after Susan’s affairs and a couple of months after she passed away Ethel rang me and asked me to sell the unit I had sold to Susan.
So, I got to know Ethel over the past few months, dropping around to get her to sign listing documents, disclosure statements, contracts and the like. Talking about her life, Susan, the terrible loss and the beautiful memories.
There was a lot of interest in the unit and I sold it to a young woman in her early 20s called Katie. Katie is a warm, energetic, hard-working, optimistic soul from a supportive local family who knew Susan and remember her fondly from shopping at Coles.
Somehow it seems so much better that Katie bought Susan’s unit rather than some investor from down south who needed a positively geared rental to balance out their portfolio of shares and property.
You might think that selling real estate is only about bricks and mortar and money. You would be wrong.
