April 29, 2007

SUNDAY, APRIL 29, 2007

House for sale,
Advertising my house for sale.
A view to the neighbors still unspoiled,
Carpet that's only slightly soiled,
House for sale.
Who will buy?
If someone doesn't, I will surely cry.
Who's prepared to pay the price,
For a house in paradise?
House for sale....


I'm sure that if Cole Porter had been trying to sell his home in S. Florida's post-boom, real-estate slump, he would have been writing about luring a buyer for something other than love.

I had a an 'Open House' today. The house was immaculate. The lawn perfectly manicured. The pool clean and clear. I baked chocolate chip cookies, made fliers and, taking advantage of the realtor's 'Open House' signs at the nearest intersection that pointed right to our door, used my two signs to mark the entrace to my driveway. I even managed to have the neighbor's semi cab (which he insists on parking straddled across the sidewalk, despite the citations he's received), uh...'moved' from the front of his house with a quick call to Code Enforcement.

I was ready. So was the Realtor down the street. The fruit of our efforts? Two visitors. I saw the same cars pull up to the other open house too. In both cases, the red Volvo drove off without ever disgorging it's passengers and the blue SUV yielded a chatty woman taking copious notes of every detail of the house and her bored husband who grunted when asked what he thought of the pool. He liked the cookies.

The Realtor (and surely many more like him/her all over Miami) and my 'Open Houses' made me think of the 'Making of Planet Earth' piece on Discovery Channel: recounting the many weeks or months it took to get 5 minutes of footage of some animal doing it's thing. We plan, we plot, we prepare and then we sit in our blinds, trying not to scare off the target, hoping for that 'one' to show up and make it all worth it.

At least the house is clean. Yay.