Nick Isgro - Realtor

The people we're getting impatient with are usually the people who actually showed up to do the work.

I was on the treadmill with a friend this morning and we somehow got talking about this.

Last night I stopped for pizza.

The place was packed. The phone was ringing off the hook. Everybody was moving a hundred miles an hour.

And somewhere in all of that, they forgot to put my order in.

The woman helping me was clearly stressed when she realized what happened.

I told her, "Look at my face. Don't ever stress."

So I had to wait another ten minutes for my pizza.

I'll survive.

My friend told me she'd recently watched a grown man berating a teenage girl at a local ice cream shop because apparently she hadn't scooped his ice cream correctly.

Think about that for a minute.

A teenager showed up for work.

She's standing behind the counter serving people.

And some grown man is losing his mind because the ice cream wasn't scooped the way he wanted it.

Meanwhile, everywhere I go, businesses are trying to find people willing to show up and work.

The people who do show up are the ones keeping the restaurant open, answering the phone, making the pizza, scooping the ice cream and making things happen.

They're going to screw something up occasionally.

Your pizza might take another ten minutes.

Your ice cream cone might not look exactly the way you pictured it.

I think we're going to be okay.

Maybe before we leave the house, we all need to remember to put our patience hat on.

Some real estate stories start with a phone call.

This one started in the grocery store.

I first got to know Ken during my years serving as mayor of Waterville.

We'd run into each other at the grocery store and stop to talk in the aisle. Nothing formal. Just the kind of conversations you have in a small town when you've known somebody for a while.

Then, after his wife passed away, Ken called me.

He had been in the same home for more than 30 years.

And suddenly, that house felt very different.

There were decades of things to sort through. Every room held memories. And even though Ken knew he was ready for something different, figuring out how to get from the life he'd known for all those years to whatever came next felt overwhelming.

But he knew what he wanted.

One-floor living.

Something quieter and a little more country.

A place that fit this next part of retirement.

He'd even bought himself a side-by-side. He could already picture some of the life ahead of him.

So Ken started.

He called the dump guys.

He got a dumpster.

And little by little, he worked his way through more than 30 years of living in one place.

Meanwhile, we started looking for the next one.

We found a house and got it under contract.

Then the inspections came back.

It wasn't the right house.

After everything Ken had already done to get himself ready to move, it would have been easy to convince himself to make it work just so he could finally be done.

He didn't.

Ken walked away and kept looking.

Not long after that, we found another one.

One-floor living. Quieter. More country.

This one felt right.

We negotiated it below asking and Ken bought it.

By Thanksgiving, he was hosting friends and family in his new home.

I think about that sometimes because when Ken first called me, he didn't have the whole road figured out.

He just knew the house he'd spent more than 30 years in no longer fit the life ahead of him.

So he started with the dumpster.

And eventually, he got to Thanksgiving.

Two identical houses could reasonably have two different asking prices.

Because pricing isn't only about the house.

It's also about what the seller needs the sale to accomplish.

When I sit down with someone who's thinking about selling, I want to understand the property. I want to look at the comparable sales, current competition, market activity and all the data we can gather.

But I also want to understand the person sitting across from me.

Why are you moving?

How quickly do you need this to happen?

What does the ideal outcome look like?

Because those answers matter.

If you tell me, "I'm perfectly comfortable here. I don't have to sell. If someone is willing to pay this number, great. If not, I'll stay," there may be room to test the upper end of what the market might support.

If you tell me, "I need to be in another state for a new job in six weeks," that's a different pricing conversation.

The house didn't change.

The market didn't change.

But the job we're asking the price to do did.

The data should establish a defensible range.

Your circumstances help us decide where within that range it makes sense to start.

That's why one of the most important questions I can ask at a listing appointment has nothing to do with square footage, bedrooms or recent sales:

Why are you moving?

What you meant doesn’t matter as much as what you wrote down.

That can be an expensive lesson in a real estate transaction.

Maybe everyone talked about closing earlier.

Maybe you thought a repair would be completed by a certain day.

Maybe there was a conversation about something happening before the next step.

But when expectations and the written agreement don’t match, eventually somebody has to go back and ask:

What did everyone actually agree to?

If a date matters, write the date.

If something needs to happen by a certain point, spell it out.

And if something in the agreement doesn’t match what you thought you were agreeing to, ask about it before you sign.

Conversations create expectations. Contracts create obligations.

This isn’t legal advice, and questions about your legal rights under a contract should be directed to an attorney.

If something matters to you in a real estate transaction, get it in writing.

I’ve had a couple of situations recently that were good reminders of this.

In one, someone wanted a closing to happen earlier and felt that if it didn’t happen by a certain date, they should be able to walk away.

The problem?

The contract gave the parties until a later date.

Saying “We’ve given them plenty of time” doesn’t change the date everyone agreed to in writing, and attempting to terminate outside the rights provided by the contract could have financial consequences.

In another transaction, an FHA appraisal called out an item that needed to be completed. Someone was frustrated that the work hadn’t already been done.

But the agreement didn’t say it had to be completed by that particular day.

It said it had to be completed by closing.

That’s an important distinction.

Purchase and sale agreements and their addenda aren’t descriptions of what everybody generally hopes will happen.

They’re contracts.

If a particular date matters, write the date.

If something needs to happen by a particular point in the transaction, spell it out.

If you’re not comfortable with something you’re agreeing to, ask questions before you sign it.

What you thought everybody understood and what everybody actually signed can be two very different things.

This isn’t legal advice, and questions about your legal rights under a contract should be directed to an attorney.

But understanding what you’ve agreed to is an important part of any real estate transaction.

Sometimes you think you’re not making progress because you’ve forgotten where you started.

I had a great conversation with a guy at the gym this morning.

He was frustrated because he’d been comparing where he is now to where he was earlier this summer. He’d gained a little weight and felt like he was moving backwards.

Then he pulled up a picture of himself from a few years ago.

Completely different story.

I pulled up one of mine from 2019 and we started talking about how easy it is to do this to ourselves.

We compare today to last week. This month to last month. Where the business is now to where we thought it would be by now.

And when the distance is small enough, sometimes all we can see is what hasn’t happened yet.

But go back far enough.

Look at the person who started. The relationship when it began. The business when it was just an idea. The thing you once struggled to do that you barely think about anymore.

Suddenly the distance becomes a lot easier to see.

I think we have incredibly short memories when it comes to our own progress.

Maybe every once in a while, instead of measuring the distance left to go, it’s worth turning around and looking at the distance you’ve already traveled.

The house had done exactly what Phil and Karen needed it to do.

They had raised their kids there. It had been the family home through the high school years, with plenty of room for everybody.

But their youngest was graduating.

And suddenly, all that space meant something different.

Phil and Karen wanted to spend more of the winter in Florida. They didn’t need to heat an enormous house in Maine while they were gone. They didn’t want to worry about plowing, upkeep and everything else that comes with maintaining a property that size from a thousand miles away.

They were ready for the next version of their life.

So they started putting the pieces together.

I connected them with an agent in Florida who could help them find a winter place there, while we worked on the Maine side.

When it came time to sell, Phil and Karen looked at the evidence in front of them. Instead of choosing the biggest number we could imagine, they chose a price they believed would get the market to respond without unnecessarily leaving money behind.

We professionally photographed the home and brought it to market.

When an offer came, they didn’t immediately accept it. They negotiated. We went back and forth several times, and they held where they needed to hold.

Then inspections came.

They looked at the buyers’ requests, separated the reasonable concerns from everything else, and agreed to take care of what made sense.

Meanwhile, two title companies were working together behind the scenes to coordinate everything.

Within a matter of days, Phil and Karen sold the big family home in Maine and bought their winter place in Florida.

And this winter, that’s where they’ll be.

No enormous Maine house sitting here to heat. No driveway to worry about plowing from Florida. No carrying two homes that no longer fit the life they wanted.

When they come back in the spring, they’ll start looking for something smaller here in Maine.

Not because there was anything wrong with the house they left.

It had simply finished doing the job they needed it to do.

And Phil and Karen were ready for what came next.

You can be completely ready to leave your home and still believe it has something good to offer the next person.

I had a conversation with a client yesterday that reminded me of something I’ve noticed over years of selling homes.

The attitude a seller brings into the process matters.

Not because positive thinking magically sells houses.

Because attitude changes behavior.

Sellers who love their homes but know it’s time to move tend to approach the process differently. They prepare differently. They handle feedback differently. When something goes wrong, the question tends to be, Okay, how do we solve it?

Compare that with starting from:

I hate this house.
Nobody is going to want it.
This thing is never going to sell.

Now every showing that doesn’t produce an offer confirms the story. Every piece of feedback feels personal. Every repair is another reason the house is terrible. Every negotiation feels adversarial.

That’s what I mean when I talk about the energy you bring to selling your home.

You don’t have to pretend your house is perfect. You don’t have to ignore the market. And you certainly don’t have to stay somewhere you’ve outgrown.

You can be grateful for what a home has been and still know it’s time to leave it.

And you can believe that the same house you’re ready to leave might be exactly what somebody else has been looking for.