Time Is Of The Essence

It all started when my wife was looking for a new position with a new company. The resumes were emailed and faxed. The follow up phone calls were being made. Phone interviews were being conducted. Lots and lots of phone interviews. After months of this frustrating process she lands a face to face interview with a company based in Chicago. Well, not in Chicago, but the greater Chicago-land area, the suburbs.

She flies back home, says the interviews went OK, not great, not horrible. She said she was not sure what would happen, they said they’d call. If anyone has ever been job hunting and you hear the “we’ll call you either way” you know what that means. Your life is now in limbo. Trying to carry on as usual, but a little tension and nervous energy start to flare up. When are they going to call? A week goes by, then two weeks, then three. Why say you’re going to call either way? To me no news is no news, whoever said it was good should reevaluate that statement. We just want to know something!

She finally gets the call. They offer her the position. She calls me and we discuss our options. They are one of the largest retail companies in the United States. The salary is good, the opportunity is good, the relocation package is great. We decide to take the job. The moment I hang up the phone with her I call our Realtor. Tell him we need to put the house on the market as soon as possible. He says no problem and within a few days our home was up for sale. In the mean time my wife is told she will be contacted by a relocation company and will get a relocation packet in the mail. They want her to start in less than one month. Now is the time to get all of our ducks in a row and make things happen.

Enter Bob, the relocation Realtor. Bob was given to us by the relocation company. Bob was an “expert” in the market. He said he knew all the ins and out of the suburbs and would help us find a new home in the town we were looking to live in. He said he had great negotiating skills and has been in Real Estate for over twenty years, we should be confident and at ease with such experience in our corner. And in the beginning we were.

Our house sold in less than ten days, for exactly what we were asking (this was right before the housing market took a huge dump). So now we really had to get moving to find a hose in our new city. My wife had to be at her new job very shortly and she was going to stay at some sort of extended stay close to her office. After work she would go with Bob, the relocation guru, house hunting. We gave Bob our criteria, price, size, neighborhood and vicinity to her new office. Bob was on our side, taking her around, giving his “expert” advice and showing her lots of homes.

But he wasn’t showing her homes that we could afford, but with his expert negotiation skills we could certainly get them down to where we needed to be. A week goes by, still no progress on the home front. I’m calling her ever day, what have you seen today? Going online, virtually tracking every house they have looked at. Her telling me that Bob says you don’t want to live over the river, too much traffic in the morning. Bob says we can negotiate, don’t worry. My wife has to worry about starting a new job and is not thinking all to clearly at this point. Our house is sold and we need to move in less than thirty days. It was time for me to take the reigns and speak to Bob.

After talking to Bob for a good amount of time, I lost all confidence in Bob. Bob was a talker, not a listener. If you are in sales and I have been in sales most of my adult life, it’s the listener that gets the sale, not the talker. I kept on asking him questions, but didn’t seem to be getting answers. I hung up the phone with Bob and got right on the phone with my wife to ask her opinion. We agreed it would be best for me to come there next weekend to go house hunting and to get Bob on our page and time line. My first trip to the Windy City, how bad could it be.

This weekend we had to buy a hose, no ifs ands or buts about it. Our house is sold, we have a closing date and need to move. My wife living in an extended stay in a far away place. We need to get our shit together and it needs to be done now. There is nothing like putting pressure on yourself to find a new place to call home in less than 48 hours. If you have ever bought a home you know what I mean. This time this was more of a business transaction, rather than finding the perfect home, with the right driveway, the proper plot of land, the picket fence and two car garage. We just needed a place to live that was in our price range and relatively close to her new job. Not a difficult task, we are giving you easy money Bob, just fucking listen.

It’s Friday morning, I get on a plane and a couple of hours later land in my new hometown, but without a house to live in. My wife picks me up at the airport, we go to the hotel and search through houses on the internet. Bob has called and we make our way up to see the great negotiator. His office is in a very affluent town in the North West suburbs. I reiterate to him what we need and that we need to take care of this situation this weekend. I tell him by the time I get back on a plane Monday morning, I want a contract on a house. Period.

We go house hunting all day, look at cookie cutter home after cookie cutter home. Bob really has no idea where he is going. He is checking maps, looking at street signs, calling listing agents for directions. I am not happy. This man has no idea what kind of temper I have and what thoughts are going through my head. Bob you really are a douche bag, Bob you really are such an asshole, Bob you really should go fuck yourself, Bob, Bob, Bob. Well, we finally see a house that we like. The right size, the right plot of land, on a cul-de-sac, quiet neighborhood and a great distance to her new office. We do the discussion sans Bob. We decide to make an offer, Bob sounds happy and we go back to his office.

This is not out first real estate transaction. I am familiar with the offer process. You offer lower than the asking price with room for negotiation. We offer a bit lower than the asking price and blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda. Then we get to the most pivotal part of the contract. The when we need an answer section. He asks me, I tell him twenty four hours. He stops, looks at me like I have my dick hanging out of my pants, and says “we don’t do things like that in Chicago, maybe where you come from that’s common practice but it’s not the Chicago way”. Really? I mean really? You can’t be serious. I ask what do you say then, and he says we put “time is of the essence”.

Now that phrase is subject to broad interpretation. My time is going to be completely different than the sellers, I guarantee it. I let Bob know this and he is quite assuring that we will get an answer sooner rather than later. I go outside to have a cigarette and call my Realtor back in Virginia. I tell him the situation and he says it sounds a bit off, but maybe this is the way they do things in Chicago. So now we are hurrying up to wait once again. We go back to the hotel, Bob calls us to tell us they received the offer and we should be hearing something soon. Maybe they do understand time is of the essence.

It’s now early evening and still no counteroffer. We decide to go have dinner and a few drinks, take the edge off and fill our bellies. Well still nothing, no communication, no answers. We call Bob, Bob said he has no idea how long this is going to take, but he will call the agent and find out. Bob did not call back, and he tells us “we can wait till tomorrow”. I say absolutely not, we want an answer tonight, yes or no, that’s it. Nothing. We got nothing. So what do we do? We give Bob an ultimatum, get an answer tonight. Well, no answer led to the inevitable. We fire Bob. Bob did you hear that, were you listening, you’re fucking fired. That’s the New York way. How you like them apples mother fucker. That’s my time is of the essence.

Now we painted ourselves into a very tight corner. No realtor, no contract and no house to live in. So what do we do? We scour the internet searching for a Real Estate office that opens early on a Sunday. The early bird gets the worm, well at least a nice commission. We find one that’s open early, and is in the town that we would like to live in. Tomorrow is going to be a good day, as long as no one says time is of the essence. I try to sleep, tossing, turning and waiting for morning to come.

The morning finally arrives and we head out, grab something to eat and make our way to the real estate office. We enter the office, which is located in a strip mall, everything is located in a strip mall out these parts and are greeted by the receptionist. We tell her that we want to buy a house, today. She said since no one was in the office she is going to have to make some phone calls to see who will be available to come in to help us. This is where I interrupt her and say “look we have been through hell and back with our previous master of negotiations, Bob, so lets just cut to the chase and get me your bulldog”. She explains that she has to follow protocol and go down “the list”. Finally she is talking to someone, tells her the situation, then proceeds to ask us to have a seat, Sharon will be with you shortly.
Sharon does not sound like the name of a bulldog, but our hands are tied at the moment, so we hurry up and wait.

A car pulls up and out gets a tiny middle-aged woman who looks like a 7th grade English teacher, walks in the office and leads us to a conference room, where we sit and tell her the entire story. The first thing she said is, “did he really tell you that we don’t ask for answers to contracts within 24 hours?”. We talked a bit more and I now realized that we have the bulldog that we were looking for. After spending an hour in her office going over the homes that we have already seen with Bob, she narrows it down to a few homes we never saw and we head out the door.

Talking to Sharon in the car we learn that she knows the area like the back of her hand. Knows what builders to avoid, knows what an SSA tax is and what homes we can get a deal on. Knowing that our time is really of the essence, we go from house to house, making an immediate assessment the moment we walk in the door. No to this and no to that, maybe we could live with that, but can’t live without this. Now this went on for a few hours, and we look at one final house. The realty sign outside says I’m Beautiful Inside. Now I can definitely relate. The house wasn’t bad on the outside by any means, but the inside did amaze us. We talk it over and put an offer in and what do you know, we got our answer in less than 24 hours. I go back home the following day with the weight of a home off of my shoulders.

Believe it or not Bob called about a week later to say that the owner of the house that we put an offer on had gotten back to him and he wanted to know if we were still interested in making that deal happen. I asked Bob if he was “fucking kidding me” and then proceeded to tell him to take his “time is of the essence and shove it up his ass the Chicago way”.