And then there was none
This anecdote was the first "war story" published in the DBA Newsletter back in the early 90's. The buyer's broker was Gil Neary of DG Neary and the seller's broker was my partner James Queally.
Our sellers were fun, and very cool, an entertainment manager/producer and his wife who also produced and was a prolific writer. My kind of people--60's hippie folk--but also very "LA" (read: a curious blend of high energy and "manana" rolled into one). Gil brought us a nice young woman who became our buyer, and everything proceeded without a hitch. However, on the day of the closing we met for the walk-through ready to see the broom clean floors and test the appliances. Instead, we were shocked to see the owners still sitting there with all their furniture, etc. Were the movers due to arrive momentarily and complete the move while we were at the closing? No, our buyers just figured we would close that day and they could take a week or so to move out. Uh, no, that's not how it's done...so, we rescheduled.
At the next walk through, things were much better, the van was outside almost fully packed and the place empty enough to satisfy the buyer and for us to head for the closing. The next day James got a call from Gil who asked him to come over to the apartment immediately. James asked why, and Gil answered "Don't ask, just get over here, you have to see this". The apartment was in a townhouse just down the street from Gil's offices and within a few blocks of ours. When James arrived, Gil was there with the new owner who did not look happy. On entering the apartment (this was a wonderful 1800's floor-thru with all the original details) James noticed all the owners' stuff had indeed been removed, unfortunately, so was all the apartment's hardware, door knobs, latches, the works, you couldn't even open some of the doors without a screw driver. Now please understand there was no maliciousness here on the part of the sellers, they simply thought doing this was okay, and no one thought it was necessary to inform them otherwise. What was even more unfortunate was they were in a U-haul somewhere between New York and California and we were unable to contact them for days (I think we finally got the call from outside Phoenix, nearly a week later). They of course were surprised and very apologetic, and immediately sent all the stuff back via UPS, but what a hassle (to use our shared 60's jargon).
Our sellers were fun, and very cool, an entertainment manager/producer and his wife who also produced and was a prolific writer. My kind of people--60's hippie folk--but also very "LA" (read: a curious blend of high energy and "manana" rolled into one). Gil brought us a nice young woman who became our buyer, and everything proceeded without a hitch. However, on the day of the closing we met for the walk-through ready to see the broom clean floors and test the appliances. Instead, we were shocked to see the owners still sitting there with all their furniture, etc. Were the movers due to arrive momentarily and complete the move while we were at the closing? No, our buyers just figured we would close that day and they could take a week or so to move out. Uh, no, that's not how it's done...so, we rescheduled.
At the next walk through, things were much better, the van was outside almost fully packed and the place empty enough to satisfy the buyer and for us to head for the closing. The next day James got a call from Gil who asked him to come over to the apartment immediately. James asked why, and Gil answered "Don't ask, just get over here, you have to see this". The apartment was in a townhouse just down the street from Gil's offices and within a few blocks of ours. When James arrived, Gil was there with the new owner who did not look happy. On entering the apartment (this was a wonderful 1800's floor-thru with all the original details) James noticed all the owners' stuff had indeed been removed, unfortunately, so was all the apartment's hardware, door knobs, latches, the works, you couldn't even open some of the doors without a screw driver. Now please understand there was no maliciousness here on the part of the sellers, they simply thought doing this was okay, and no one thought it was necessary to inform them otherwise. What was even more unfortunate was they were in a U-haul somewhere between New York and California and we were unable to contact them for days (I think we finally got the call from outside Phoenix, nearly a week later). They of course were surprised and very apologetic, and immediately sent all the stuff back via UPS, but what a hassle (to use our shared 60's jargon).
