Too busy! I just got off the phone with a friend I haven't seen in months. We made plans for lunch next week and both of us agreed that we had been too busy - she with family obligations, me with real estate and family also. How does it happen? The time flies by and we don't take the time for important things, like Zumba with Lisa, or walking Koko in the Village, or going to India House with Bob in the convertible. Camp isn't closed yet for the winter - the grass needs one last mowing because it had the audacity to grow some more - my database needs updating to accommodate my new buyers (wait! that's business related!) I must learn to smell the flowers - some day.
Currently there are 125 active listings in the Skaneateles area of the multiple listing service waiting to be sold, so no rest here! Thirty-two of these are in the village - and I plan to sell at least one this weekend. Four new listings came on this past week, and one re-list, a pretty renovated farmhouse with a slightly reduced price. A gorgeous home overlooking the lake with acreage but no waterfront came on at over 1.5M. A lovely old farmhouse was also listed at less than half a million. Another older home with 3 acres seems like a bargain at just over $200,000. A modern edge-of-village home was listed at over $400,000.
Two properties were marked contingent. A farmhouse in need of some work and priced accordingly (and one my people were interested in seeing, mind you!) can still be shown as well as a lake rights property. These are two potential closings before the end of the year - well done!
Now the very good news. Two more homes closed and brought the number of closings to 60 for the year. This means that at some point in the next week I will write about the third twenty homes, reporting addresses and prices which are matters of public record.
One of the properties was a village home in the high $200,000 range, closing within 10% of the original price. The other was waterfront, closing (as pointed out by an agent in another office) after four years at one of the largest discrepancies between assessed value and sale price - from under $700,000 (original price) to under $400,000 (sale price). I can also report that the new owners are thrilled with their camp and eager for next summer to start.
And I guess that explains in part why I've been so busy - because I enjoy this so much. I get to see lovely homes, settle families where they want to be, make new friends and yes, keep the old.
Not such a bad life.
