The Rest of the Story

Back Story 1: Last year I had a horrible client who went out of his way to be just as nasty as can be. I brought him five offers in 36 hours. This wasn't because I was a rock star real estate agent, it was because of the market conditions at the time. However, three of the offers were over asking price. In return for selling his house (twice--the first buyer walked because he was such a jerk), he belittled me, abused me and made me question whether a true jury of my peers could possibly question my motives. As soon as my commission check came, I slapped it down on a vacation to Uncle Sunshine's island and to visit the MouseHouse in Orlando as a way to celebrate Marty Sunshine's upcoming 50th birthday.

Back Story 2: The day before Thanksgiving, I was attacked by the feral kitten I was rescuing from certain death. As a reward for saving this cat's life, the beast rendered my right thumb unusable for more than two weeks. Even as I type this, there is still a little bit of sting where her fang went straight through to the bone. Stupid cat.

So, I went to visit Uncle Sunshine's island paradise. The major downside of this is that it is 2,300 mile drive from my desert home. In exchange for pleasant company and a little bit of helping out Uncle Sunshine with odd jobs, we had a fabulous beach house to stay in where Marty, the kids and I could just forget 2013 even happened--which was fine by me. So, as we were hanging out one night I got a "welcome to the family" e-mail on my phone which told me Kirby has sold his company to Mario.

Many things happened from that e-mail. First, it put a major damper on my vacation. And, because my texting thumb was incapacitated (stupid cat), I was unable to completely express my displeasure about this arrangement. Not that anyone cared what I thought anyway. But the major issue I faced was my gut tied in about 16 knots and I felt green. The result being that I knew I would rather go back to managing these properties myself than go with Mario.

As I toyed seriously with calling Carolsue, seeing what she had going on for the next 18 months and begging her to please drop everything and let me bug her endlessly until the end of time, Daisy came through with another plan. This plan would bring a bit more sanity to Carolsue. Daisy--who was about to be unemployed--was shopping around for another property management brokerages to work with before her last day with Kirby's now-defunct company. She had a couple of interviews with different property management firms. And, great news! None of those companies are ones I have personally sicked the Alabama Attorney General's office on.

Even though Daisy was changing companies, I wasn't sure I really wanted to follow her either. After all, what if her new company was one of the previous rejects from my already long list of, "I will never do business with in Alabama. Ever."? She eventually found a company she liked. I actually talked to the broker for 30 minutes while waiting for my family to get off Splash Mountain. I asked all sorts of question that either baffled or impressed the new broker.

"Do you have a clause in your tenant agreement that says if the landlord is forced to call a repairman for something stupid you caused, you--Dear Tenant--will pay for it?" Yes they do.

"Do you give keys to random strangers who say they want to see a vacant home and then just expect this person off the street to go view the property, lock the house back up and return the key (without making a copy, stealing the copper or just moving in?" No. They don't.

And of course, there was my essay question as well: "How do all'y'all feel about Section 8 tenants?" He and I were of a like mind on that one.

As it turns out, the new company sounds acceptable. I negotiated a reasonable rate with them--that's something you can do when your new leasing agent is offering to bring over landlords with a gazillion homes to add to your inventory.

I was able to send one long-ish e-mail with hopefully no typos to Mario on my phone (stupid cat) explaining he was not getting my gazillion homes and please stop sending me endless boilerplate e-mails about what a "great opportunity" this will be for me. To his credit, Mario handled the news with a lot of class and asked if we could "discuss this further." (Note to Mario: No. No we can't.) And Bliz--God bless her--wrote a letter on my behalf cutting my former ties. Apparently my phone/e-mail wouldn't do. It had to be a letter and it was very time sensitive.

Hopefully this new change will be the start of a brighter future.