To Save One Sinking Home Sale Deal Required A 16-foot Boat

Miami Today  Week of Thursday, January 9,
Essential to the toolbox of successful residential real estate agents are tricks that can save the deal when all seems lost.

In the case of one home in North Coconut Grove, it was the seller's inclusion of a South Florida symbol, said Charlette Seidel, Coldwell Banker's managing broker for the Coral Gables office on Sunset Drive.

"Our most creative way to close the sale involved a home that sold in the fall of 2001." Ms. Seidel said.  "We had buyers from up North who fell in love with a Colonial-style home in North Coconut Grove, because it was just like the home they were leaving. The sellers were moving out of state.  The negotiations went on until the buyer felt they were at their top dollar and the seller said they were at their bottom dollar.  They were still several thousands of dollars apart and each had dug in their heels."

It was Anne Platt, an associate of Ms. Seidel, who solved the deadlock.

She desperately wanted the sale to go through.  She remembered that, when she was showing the house, the buyers admired this lovely 16 ft. boat with a motor that was stored is the garage.  The buyers said to each other, "Oh boy, we're in Miami, we're near the water, we'll have to look for one just like that."

Just as that small boat, with its images of sun, sand and sea spoke evocatively to the buyers, so it would save the deal.

"Anne called the sellers and said, "Why don't you give them the boat and maybe I can make this deal work?"  then called the buyers and said; "What if you come up to his price and he includes the boat?"  The buyer said, "What a great idea." and the sellers didn't need the boat where they were moving and would have had to sell it anyway.

"And that's how the sale was closed and everybody lived happily ever after," Ms. Seidel said.