Small World

So, I get home last night and am in the middle of hanging some shirts, when my wife yells to me that my phone is ringing. I get it too late, and write the number down. As I'm writing, the phone beeps and shows that the person left a message. So, I call my VM and listen to the message. It's from a man wanting to know more about House #2. I was going to go to both houses anyway to hang some "OPEN HOUSE" signs for this coming weekend, so I wait to call him when I'm at House #2.

I drop by HD to pick up the signs and head to House #2. As soon as I get there, I call the man back. He says he owns a house in the neighborhood, and his mother is wanting to come down from West Virginia to live near him. I tell him I'm originally from West Virginia, too, and that if he wants to see the house now, I am there and can meet him. He says he'll be right over.

Sure enough, not more than 5 mins later, he's at the house. Beforehand, I had turned all the lights in the house on so he (or I) won't have to do it when he gets there. As he's looking around, we talk about West Virginia and how it came to be that we both ended up in the outskirts of Austin, TX. Ironically, our paths were almost exactly the same. He said he was in the Army and was stationed at Ft. Hood for 8 years. He got out and moved down here so that he could get a job as a nurse. I moved from West Virginia to San Antonio due to being in the Air Force. I was in the military for 6 years, and got out and wound up where I'm at due mainly to my career as well. He says he's been trying to get his mother to move down here to get away from those dreadful winters in West Virginia, which, ironically again, is what I've been trying to do with my mother ever since my step-father passed away two years ago.

He asks a few questions about leasing the home (i.e., terms, specials I have, security deposit), and says he'll talk to his mother more about it. He said it's the exact same floorplan as his, and his mother fell in love with it when she came to visit several months ago. He also said the plan was to have her come down in mid-December, have a house or two lined up for her to choose, drive back to WVa to pick up her things, drive back here, and unload her stuff. So, he said they were looking at around a Jan 1st move-in, which sounded good to me.

It was interesting, but I was more happy to meet someone from where I grew up more than knowing I may have a renter for the house (note: there aren't too many people I meet down here that are from WV). After he left, I put up the "OPEN HOUSE" sign next to the other sign in the yard and left to House #1 to do the same. I plan to have an open house on House #2 Saturday and then have one for House #1 on Sunday. I also noticed that the flyer tubes for BOTH houses were empty, and I didn't have any spares. I had just checked these on Saturday, and they were about half full, so I must've gotten a lot of lookers on Sunday. I need to print out a LOT of flyers to put out tonight AND to keep as backups at each house AND for this weekend's open houses.