Selling the rowhouse in S.F.

As executor of her sister Lois's estate, Linda has been in the process of selling a rowhouse in San Francisco. (And no, this doesn't make us rich, the bulk of the money goes toward Lois's kids....)

She connected with a very high energy real estate agent; who completely dominated Linda's time in S.F. Linda would call me at the end of the day, totally exhausted by the woman. "I didn't see her eat or drink or do anything else all day!"

The woman talked Linda into renovating the rowhouse. Especially the kitchen, which admittedly needed to be updated. I was a little skeptical; O.K. the house had a few problems, but why spend more money on it? Sell it as is!

Linda put her trust in this real estate agent and another high powered woman, who was going to oversee the renovations and the staging of the sale.

I was in the car once when the real estate agent called and proceeded to explain ad naseum about a problem with a drain, and how it would require a repair and on and on and on. I finally couldn't stand it anymore, and butted in, "Hey, shit happens. Just fix it."

Linda hushed me, and they continued to have another half hour of conversation, which resulted in the decision to....you guessed it, "Fix it."

Anyway, mostly, I've kept out of it.

Good thing.

When we visited S.F., a month or so ago, we dropped by the rowhouse. It was in the middle of repairs, but I could see they were doing a good job. I liked the funkiness of the original layout, but they were definitely probably making it more attractive by updating it. New landscaping, repairs, painting, new kitchen, etc. etc.

I also realized, by seeing it with my own eyes, what an attractive neighborhood it was in. Houses apparently don't come up for sale there, very often. (Linda says it was 5 years since another house on the block came up for sale, though that's a little hard to believe. Certainly didn't see any 'For Sale' signs.) Attractive, but also affordable, at least in S.F. terms. It would be where I would want to live, if I had to live there.

About 10 days ago, they sent us pictures of the results, and Wow, was I wrong. The place looked fantastic. You know how, on the Home and Garden channel they'll show before and after pictures? This looked better than any of those. Amazing transformation.

So it turns out that the people we hired, with their big city high energy, knew their stuff.

Last week, Linda and the real estate agent had a 3 and half hour phone conversation about setting the price. The woman suggested a price upfront, Linda agreed, and they spent the next 3 hours going around the Cape of Good Hope to....you guessed it, arrive at the original price.

The woman's strategy was to price the house almost 10% less than we hoped to get, to get people to make bids and figure the ultimate price would be higher. After watching the Bend market for the last couple years, this seemed a little crazy, but by now the real estate agent had earned some credibility, so we went with it.

They had 50 people show up for the open house last week.

They had 13 offers. All substantially higher than the asking price. The best three offers were mostly in the 12% to 18% higher, range. There were several just as high, but looked like they might run into problems. Even with the money spent, this price will probably be at least 15% higher than we would've gotten selling 'as is.'

Not to jinx it, but this house might sell within a week or two, and at 10% to 15% higher than asking price.

Like I said, it was the kind of San Francisco rowhouse that made the city famous, in a desirable but relatively affordable neighborhood, and I think we lucked into a real estate agent who was more ambitious than we were.

Wish us luck.