Open Writing

In my lifetime I have owned and sold several houses. Each experience was different, but had a common thread; the irrational behavior of buyers, including myself. There’s something about house hunting that brings out the quirkiness in people, and there’s no telling how they will react when spending several thousand dollars.

From my own experiences I have learned just two things: a) There’s a buyer for every house, no matter how unsalable the seller thinks it is, and b) the prospective buyers that gush most over the property are the least likely to buy.

Also, it seems that once a prospect makes a decision to buy, the seller could point out the property’s every fault and shortcoming, and the sale will still go through. I know this is true because I have been on both sides of the transaction. In one case, as a buyer, I knew I had to have the house as soon as I got out of the realtor’s car in the driveway.

Each step of the way after that revealed features that should have dissuaded me, but I was well and truly hooked. The house had been built 30 years before, so it wasn’t really old, but the builder was the first owner, and was no builder. His lack of construction skills had contributed to the premature deterioration of the structure. Other than that, the approach was up a long, steep driveway; a definite negative in an area noted for its winter ice storms.

The floors creaked, the interior doors didn’t fit, and all the appliances had seen better days. A steep hill, strewn with car-sized boulders, rose at the back of the house. If any one of those rocks had come loose, it would have done some impressive damage. Trees surrounded the place, some of them over eighty feet high, and all within range of my roof if they fell.

My wife and I lived in the house for eighteen years, and when it was time to move on, we anticipated a long wait to find a buyer. It had been on the market for two years when we purchased it, so a quick sale seemed out of the question. Months before we even put it up for sale, a buyer came to our door and offered us a cash deal! Our next home sold in somewhat the same way, without advertising or a realtor, and all in the space of about thirty minutes!

I am sure there are people who are very cool-headed about home buying, and even as they take possession, are taking into account how saleable the property might be. For me, and thousands like me, it’s an emotional decision that has very little to do with rationality, practicality or gain. Fortunately, my instincts have never let me down.

As with house buying and selling, so it is with boats. In twenty-five years I have purchased three and sold two. The latter were old wooden classics, one of which I restored, the other I never got around to. It was a mahogany Century that had no engine, and was showing the consequences of decades of neglect. I advertised it in an antique and classic boat magazine with zero response.

Somehow, the advertisement was picked up by a web site called, of all things, “Junk Boats,” and almost immediately it attracted a buyer who couldn’t wait to give me a cheque for my asking price! I gave him ample opportunity to examine the hull, and pointed out the decay and the warped keel, but nothing dissuaded him.

I have just sold my third boat, Yorkshire Lass, which I owned for 22 years from new. It was only on the market for three weeks, but attracted some predictably quirky types of buyer. The first call came from Oregon, roughly 2,500 miles away! The gentleman had not owned a boat before, nor did he know how to sail, but his first question was whether my boat was suitable for island hopping! I didn’t quite know how to respond without resorting to sarcasm.

My next inquirer told me he was sixty-five years old, had just retired, and, like the gentleman from Oregon, had never owned a boat or learned to sail. Further discussion revealed that he planned to sail the boat to Florida with his 19-year-old granddaughter, and then cross to the Bahamas! The 1,800 mile trip from where the boat was docked in Connecticut, to Miami in Florida, is a testing experience for the most experienced sailor, even taking the Intracoastal Waterway.
Though the Waterway is sheltered for the most part, the route still involves crossing large bodies of open water, some of which, like the Delaware estuary and Pamlico Sound, are notorious for extreme weather. The crossing from Florida to the Bahamas is a two-day trip at best, and the Island waters are littered with coral reefs, demanding expert navigation.

As our discussion progressed, the feeling grew stronger that I should protect the man from his own foolishness and refuse to sell him the boat, a decision I never imagined I’d have to make, but I’m glad I did.