Tales From The Trenches

Late last week, I met up with some clients whom I recently helped with the sale of their condo to do a final quality control check to ensure everything was ready before final possession is delivered to the buyers. The place looked great, and as I looked around, I was reminded of all the work that had gone into getting it to that point, as well as contractual arrangements like the one-month leaseback which had been negotiated to make the process as stress-free as possible while my go-to vendors and team members had helped get their new place ready for them to move into.

The clients told me they’ve started to refer to my team and vendors as existing within a mythological realm called “the Dattaverse”, where everything seems to manifest and competent help is just a phone call away. And while it is fun to envision the concept of such a utopian fantasy, the reality is often considerably more gritty. 

Waking up the following morning to a series of calls from a another client who is earlier in their process and dealing with the drama of a frustrated contractor threatening to walk off the job, I was quickly reminded that it takes a lot of steps to get to that utopian state, and it occurred to me that a large part of my role is simply helping people to keep calm and carry on.

Another key component of our process is managing expectations and coordinating schedules between the lives of the owners as we help the various vendors juggle their schedules so that they don’t get in each other’s way, while also avoiding extended periods of downtime or overlap.

We eventually negotiated a few days for the contractor to move his crew to another job, and made arrangements for a different crew to help handle the remaining items that need to be cleared out of the way. 

This included our project manager bringing a portable kennel to temporarily contain the resident housecats to improve logistics so they could more freely move the remaining belongings that will be saved into the garage while others were loaded up and hauled away. And with a well-timed trip for the owners to visit relatives out of town for a few days and give our landscaping, painting and flooring crews the space to complete their jobs it was easier to convince the workers that the coast was clear to return.

Things are shaping up nicely to be ready for our stager to administer the final touches in about a week, after which we will be able to have the photographer come out and document the home in its best light. And when visitors come to see the place, the sights and sounds of the month-long process of preparing the home for the market will be a distant memory, replaced by the pleasant surroundings of yet another magical utopian experience.