Good Fences Makes Good Neighbors
September 5th, 2007 Categories: Around the City of Alexandria, Buyers, Condos, Sellers, Shirlington
They are putting a new fence up in Windgate. I live in Windgate. It’s been 15 years now and I don’t think this fence has ever been replaced. So it’s a good thing that we’re getting a new one. It’s even better that I don’t have to pay a special assessment to do it.
The fence stretched from Windgate III to the back of the property where Windgate II resides. It’s taken four months to get two condo boards to approve this one project– so I hope we don’t have to do it again for another 20 years.
One day last spring after one of the few heavy rains we experienced this year, the fence came down. It seemed that no one was paying attention to it, that it needed some attention and care and just fell down.
Getting everyones attention.
Of course, only part of it came down– the one near my townhouse. The fence separates us from the Arlington County Yard. Arlington County tries to be a good neighbor– we don’t hear trucks coming and going all night, they finally got their mulch pile under control after many meetings with their neighbors. But that was a long time ago. We complained, they listened and fixed the problem. I have no real complaints about Arlington County’s maintenance yard being our neighbor. I do have a huge complaint that they don’t see it as their responsibility to have a fence separating our condo community from their maintenance yard. Instead– putting up that fence is our cost. But putting up this fence has kept Arlington County a good neighbor. So its all good.
As I came home every night last week, I watched the progress of this fence. It got me thinking about this fence, how it’s needed, how it creates boundaries even though we know what those boundaries are and we have no dispute with our neighbor.
Real Estate Agents Make Good Fences
It made me think that sometimes as agents we are fences, creating boundaries to separate out the emotion of selling or buying property. When we work agent-to-agent– we help the buyer and seller stay good neighbors through the process of selling a home.
I was working on a deal last week– one that could have been very stressful for everyone involved. Instead, because the agents saw the ultimate goal here was to sell a property to someone who wanted to buy it, we were able to work through issues with relocation companies, a seller two time-zones away, closing dates less than 30 days, and trying to get it all agreed to before a long holiday weekend. Late Friday, we had a deal.
I couldn’t help but think what would have happened if the buyer wasn’t represented with a buyer’s agent. There were issues that came up during the negotiations that would have confused, frustrated and angered a buyer working on their own. I’m glad my clients had me as their agent. They are a nice couple who will be getting married soon. They were open to my advice and trusted what I was telling them and weren’t afraid to ask questions. They didn’t give up. They continued to counter until we found the seller’s sweet spot. And while the listing agent didn’t and couldn’t tell us what that number was, she keep on telling us to counter with another offer.
So I’m glad we were there to create the boundary between the buyer and the seller and make the sale of this condo in Alexandria a possibility.
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[…] This is the first large scale project on this kind to go up in Shirlington since the Village at Shirlington Condominium & West Village at Shirlington- but those are condos. They are the first townhouses built since the Windgate townhouses in the 1980s. But even Windgate is a condo. So– this is the largest non-condo project to go up in Shirlington since Fort Barnard Heights in the 1940s. […]