Received an inquiry about "Riverbend" from a couple who own an acreage at Tilba which they're selling to buy a waterfront property. Their first question was, "What's the situation of your place in relation to a 1-in-50-year flood event?"
"Been here for twenty-five years and so far no flood", I replied, "but we take nightly precautions", and enclosed this photograph. So far no reply.
It's a bit déjà vu - or more precisely, déjà vécu - of the time when a Norman Gunston look-alike was leaning on the gate and asked me, "Emma Chisit?" - click here - , after which I heard no more from him.
A month later he had bought a $1.7million-property four doors up the lane; two months later an adjoining old house for $750,000; and just recently the last vacant waterfront block for another $525,000. "Emma Chisit?" must've been just a rhetorical question.
A few years earlier, a Canberra couple had come walking down the driveway. "Is this property still for sale/" they asked, almost salivating. I gave them the royal tour, after which they emailed me, "Peter, thank you so much for the time you took to show us around your lovely property yesterday. We will discuss our options with our accountant and contact you early next week", and a couple of weeks later, "Peter, we made some preliminary arrangements with my bank with a view to the purchase. We’d like to arrange for their valuer to come by and appraise the property. Would it suit you to do this sometime this week?"
That same week a pimply-faced young man arrived, introduced himself as "The Valuer", and drank several cups of tea while I told him about the property, including that we'd rejected a previous offer of $1.64 million.
Weeks later, another email arrived from the Canberra couple, "Please accept our apologies for not having corresponded with you earlier. Our company has been involved in protracted negotiations regarding a major new contract. Whilst the new contract is good news, we’ve also been hit with some unexpected expenses that have upset our original plans. Accordingly, we regret to tell you that we won’t be in a position to pursue the purchase of Riverbend, as much as we’d love to". And then came the postscript, "You may be interested to know that the independent valuation on your property came back at $1.64 million".
"Hope you didn't pay too much for that valuation as that's the amount of a previous offer I had told 'The Valuer' about", I replied and went on to say that, since Riverbend may have been a little too ambitious, a small wooden shack on a small quarter-acre waterfront block had just come up for sale at $950,000 which might be more suitable for them.
Within days, the SOLD-sign went up on that wooden shack and a couple of months later the Canberra couple moved in. That should've been it but again a few months later they had also bought the adjoining vacant quarter-acre block for another $750,000. They'd become the owners of a wooden shack and 3,000 square metres of land for a total of $1.7 million which put them within cooee of Riverbend's asking price. Go figure!
The winner of the Salesman-of-the-Year Award is ... well, sadly, not me!
P.S. Here's the sequel to the $1.7 million-story: as they began to built a huge wall around their 3,000 square metres, I could already hear the knives being sharpened in the neighbourhood. Knowing that something was afoot, I told them that I'd grown up in the shadow of the Berlin Wall and wouldn't be one of those who'd complain to Council. Predictably, Council ordered them to take down their huge wall which they did on their way out just before the FOR SALE-signs went back up again.
