Dear Owners & Listing Agents of vacant relocation properties, short sales and foreclosures:

Today I showed one house that was completely unshoveled and a 2nd that was partially shoveled but very icy.  In both cases I and my clients almost fell a couple times each.  This is not a good way to get people to buy your house.  The house that hadn’t been shoveled at all didn’t even have any tracks – a sure sign it hadn’t been looked at since before the Christmas snowstorm over a week ago.  How many buyers & agents pulled up, didn’t want to trudge through the snow and then drove off?  When buyers and their agents have cold wet feet from the snow outside they are not likely to be as happy when they make it inside… first impressions are everything and you have certainly made a bad one.

Click on the picture for a larger version.

I recently received a bill from a twin cities suburb for a foreclosure property I maintain.  Last year after it was abandoned and before I took over the lawn maintenance the city decided it was a “nuisance property” and hired a contractor to do monthly mowings.  Between the contractor’s fees and the city’s profit fees the total for 3 mowings added up to over $1100!  This is for a 1/3 acre city lot with a big house on it.

The cost for the 3 lawn mowings over 3 months totaled nearly $800 while the city profits penalties added another $300+.  I was able to contract out to a lawn company to mow the same lawn for a paltry $45 for bi-weekly mowings.  I think the city took a page out of the loan shark’s manual and while I understand their intent to motivate property owners to maintain their properties and keep the city pretty, this amounts to a wholesale ripoff of property owners.  The property was completely abandoned at the time of the 1st mowing but I had placed notice and contact information in plain view on the property before the 2nd and 3rd mowings occurred yet no effort was made to contact me.

To make matters worse, I had contracted to have the lawn mowed on a bi-weekly basis starting in September and after the first time it was done, 5 days later the city inspector came by and said: “hey, you missed a spot” and had the ENTIRE lawn mowed for the 3rd time, at a cost of nearly $200, and a city penalty of $200 on top of it.

After much wrangling with the city, I was able to get them to reduce the $200 penalty for the mowing that wasn’t needed but the remaining $100+ in penalties and all $800 in mowing fees remains charged to the property.

I’m not saying the city should do nothing and I’m not saying that the grass didn’t need to be mowed the 1st time (and maybe the 2nd, but the 3rd time is B.S.) but when it is done at such exorbitant rates it truly affects the eventual sale of the home to a new buyer.  I don’t think we need more headaches in that department than we already have.  The new owner (bank) had every intention to maintain the property however these things don’t happen overnight and notices cities send out take weeks sometimes to make it to a person who can take action.  Even when I took an active role of maintaining the property they still found a way to rack up additional costs that were ridculously high and also unwarranted.

If I could get the city to give me the contract and get paid nearly $200 to mow a city-sized lot I’d quite my job a Realtor in a heartbeat!

One of my closest friends in my office made a great observation of the differences in generations: she’s at the start of the Gen X’er and I’m just at the start of Generation Y (or often called Millennials).  While her generation would go to Home Depot and replace the tree with a $50 4’ – 5’ version that would grow into a beautiful tree in 15-20 years, my generation would rather spend more, in my case $800, to get a 25’ tree that is already substantial and will be a quality shade tree in less than 10 years.  I actually would have preferred to go even larger but the bigger you get the higher mortality rate you have on those transplants.

The method I chose was referred to as tree spading.  I went out to the contractor’s tree farm and walked their farm to find the right size, condition and type of tree for my needs.  Because I wanted a fast growing tree that would be quite large when fully grown, we went with an Autumn Blaze Maple.

Once I selected the tree it was only about a week before I had it delivered.  The day of delivery the contractor “dug up” the tree and brought it down… once he showed up at my house the tree was in the ground in less than 30 minutes.

The nice thing about tree spading is that the tree has a significant amount of the roots transported with it, the tree is only out of the ground a few hours, and you don’t have to do any digging yourself!  Due to the efficiency of this method in reducing stress on the tree, my contractor said his survivability rate is in the high 90’s%.

I was very pleased with my experience and would recommend it to anyone else looking for a fast solution to getting large trees.  For those of you in the Twin Cities area, I certainly recommend my contractor, Shermik Tree Farms.

So, for those of you who want to plant a large tree into your yard for quicker results, here are some photos from my adventure:

The tree on the truck

Digging the hole

The hole – 90″

Placing the tree into the hole

Balancing it out and pulling the spade out

All done!