Comp One Blog - Your Local Expert!

As an appraiser, I have had the opportunity to walk through thousands of homes.  It can all blend together, and most of the time I find it difficult to recall anything about a home I saw a few years ago.  You might even catch me occasionally struggling to remember a home I saw a few days ago.  What address was that?.  I have a job to do, and I'm not nosy, but you can't help but get the feel of a home and it's inhabitants when you do what I do.  You see people at all stages of life: the freewheeling and ambitious single, the exuberant young couple with a plethora of aphorisms on the wall, the somewhat exasperated and messy couple with young children, the busy middle aged couple holding it together, the empty nesters hopefully rediscovering something worthwhile, the graceful senior citizen sometimes having lived a whole life in a house and all that that brings with it.  I usually can identify with a few things: "Oh, I have that book, too.", "I'm also a musician.", "My kids are the same age.".  Ocassionally I will come across some really good decorating or organizational ideas that my wife and I could use.  Mostly, it's good stuff.  Sometimes, you find yourself in close proximity to tragedy or sad situations.  Whatever the case ,I try not to dwell on it too much, and keep a healthy perspective and respect for people's spaces.  And, as many times as people have apologized to me for messes, I figure we are all just trying to do our best to make it through the day.  Keeping a clean house is a lot of work, and not many folks have homes they are living in that look anything like the staged homes you see online.