The Flop

A misunderstood and little recognized facet of real estate is the athletic event. One such event is called the Real Estate Yard-Dash. Not to be confused with standard athletic events known as the 50-yard dash or the 100-yard dash, the Real Estate Yard-Dash differentiates itself as not a race of yards, but as a race through yards.  Yards, in real estate terminology refers to front yards and back yards. The Real Estate Yard-Dash is typically motivated by an animal of some sort, most commonly a dog. Snakes, bees, and bulls are also proven motivators. The event often involves a certain amount of panic for the performer, and sometimes laughter for the audience.

      
I can count in my career at least 50 yard-dashes, and I know of Realtors who have performed or witnessed more than 100 yard-dashes. Back yards are most challenging, because they are usually surrounded by a fence, which adds the potential necessity of executing a high-jump at the conclusion of the yard-dash, in effect, creating a double-event.

      
I’m sorry to say that a certain number of the yard-dashes in my career were performed by my clients, one of which I’ll cite here, a double-event as mentioned above.

My buyer, Johnny Gomes, must have grown impatient as I struggled with the lock-box attached to the hose-bib behind the bushes in the front yard of the ‘50’s ranch house fixer-upper, for he unlatched the side-gate and made his way around to the back yard.

     
     “It’s vacant, right?” he called out.

      “Yep, vacant,” I said.

Gomes is a contractor, and infinitely more importantly, has long legs.

I walked through the front door, past the tables, chairs, and rugs, and out the back slider, sticky note attached to the glass: “Dog Bites”.

     
Gomes shot past me like an Olympic sprinter leading a race. In second place and gaining was a German Shepherd lunging at Johnny’s backside.

     
At the conclusion of his yard-dash, Gomes high-jumped and the shepherd snapped just short of the high-point between Johnny’s legs. Gomes sailed over the fence backwards, thereby executing an admirable Fosbury Flop, as made famous by high-jumper gold-medalist  Dick Fosbury in the 1968 Summer Olympics.

     “Vacant, huh?” said Gomes, pulling grass and gravel from his scalp.

     “Sorry, my mistake,” I said. I felt really bad.

But I was really envious of that Fosbury Flop.

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The Neighbor

I got a call from an angry guy.

“I got burned!” he said. “An appraiser came to my house and low-balled me.” The angry guy said he’d done a lot of work on his place, and the appraiser had given it no credit.

“I’m surprised he could find his way around here at all,” said the angry guy, “because he must have been blind as a bat!”

I drove up to the angry guy’s house. The outside paint was fresh; the roof appeared to be in good shape; the grass was mowed.

He swung open the front door. “Welcome to the meat and potatoes of the American Dream!” he said.

“Ha! Good one,” I said. His neighborhood was built shortly after World War Two, and many of the homes were originally sold to returning veterans, so his line about “the meat and potatoes of the American Dream” made some sense.

Unfortunately for the angry guy, appraisers not only analyze the meat and potatoes, they analyze the side dishes, too. In other words, appraisers don’t just look at the house they are appraising. They also look at the neighbors.

The guy had a bad neighbor.  That gave me an idea as to what went wrong.

I called an acquaintance at the National Appraisal Institute. “How much effect on value is a bad neighbor?” I asked.

“We refer to that as External Obsolescence, he said.

He told me he’d seen situations where External Obsolescence such as a bad neighbor lowered a property’s value by more than ten per cent.

“Does this particular neighbor demonstrate anything like an unkempt yard, annoying pets, unpleasant odors, loud music, dangerous trees, or poorly maintained exterior?” he asked.

“All of that.”

“Oh my,” he said.

I relayed this new information to the angry guy.

“You forgot one thing,” the angry guy said. “My neighbor is also a jerk!”

He wondered what he should do.

I told him the National Appraisal Institute recommends looking into possible code violations by a bad neighbor, and if necessary, hiring an attorney.

Or he could take my grandmother’s advice: “If you want a good neighbor, bake ‘em a pie.”

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Doug Love is Sales Manager at Century 21 Jeffries Lydon. Email escrowgo@aol.com, or call 530-680-0817.