Once upon a time, there was a girl who really needed a real estate agent. Her name was me.
I downloaded the realtor.com app and browsed endlessly, dreaming of my perfect new life in different homes I couldn’t afford. My dream home had space for books and a backyard large enough to keep chickens. I never dreamed that a house would be built halfway up a mountain. Driving up a mountain is scary to death. Zoloft is effective for general driving anxiety, but not when driving in the mountains. Nothing helps when it comes to mountains.
My husband Jonathan and I moved from the rolling green fields of Pennsylvania to the beautiful mountainsides of WNC last year. We came here because we needed a bigger sky, a place that offers more opportunities and hope for artists like us.
On our first trip to Skyland Library, we knew we had found the right place. Jonathan and I were working for a news magazine, and our team in the Asheville office was covering the recent public attack on author Salman Rushdie at the time. When Jonathan picked up Rushdie’s book at a library book sale, a woman nearby asked, “Do you know what’s going on with him?” Many good things happened in our former home in Amish country, but when strangers asked us about Salman Rushdie’s health, do not have One of them.
Still — can I look at the big sky without driving directly into it?
After we moved in, we paid Arden’s rent in one lump sum for 9 months. At night, while my daughters fell asleep, my eyes devoured page after page of our three-bedroom, two-bath home. I hate to admit it, but Realtor.com had become my false god. Beautiful photos promise you a lot.they do do not have You can usually tell if the house is on a cliff.
That’s why we need a genie.
Several local friends introduced me to Ginny and Matt Barker of Nest Realty. Ginny quickly replaced my real estate agent app. She became my real estate agent mom. If you’re looking for a home in the Asheville area, you need a real estate mom as well as a real estate agent. Someone who will guide you without giving up. Someone who will close the deal for you day and night. Someone who can mourn with you when your offer is rejected and help you try again. Someone who will be by your side through the good times, the bad times, the ugly times, and even the toughest times.
Jonathan and I went to the first screening with leaden hearts. We were worried that it would be impossible to find a home. The kids were crying in the backseat for a Happy Meal, to no avail.
As we wound our way down the back roads looking for a property, we were horrified to find that our first lovely home was on a forbidding hill, definitely on a perpendicular road. We were trying to drive straight into the sky.
I covered my eyes. “I want to go to heaven someday,” my heart pounded. “But I don’t want to go to heaven at a 90-degree angle in my Kia Sorento.” I was worried the car would flip backwards. I know the real mountain people are laughing at me. However, just as I am not good at mathematics, I have an innate dislike for mountains.
At the top of the hill, I walked out, blue in the face. Ginny looked at me and said, “That tells me what I need to know.” There is no more mountain home. Not for me. Ginny doesn’t mind driving up things or turning around in weird places. But I do, and it’s okay.
The next house I looked at didn’t have space for a kitchen table.A certain no. The third true promise is that he has three bedrooms and a garden with a fence high enough for the dog to jump over. 11 minutes from the office. But, as Ginny and Matt non-judgmentally pointed out our ignorance, the house had no insulation.
But we made an offer on the next house. A perfect quaint cottage with chickens in the garden. I didn’t understand. Then we offered a townhouse with a mortgage that we could manage, but we didn’t get that either. Other homes we looked at include one in a pestilence swamp and another with a steep cliff drop in the backyard. These unsafe homes were at the bottom of the current market, but just above the top of the budget. Ginny humorously took us to all of them and even crawled into their seedy, filthy crawlspaces.
Real estate moms are like fairy godmothers. She ends the story happily. Eventually, Ginny found us the perfect home in Old Fort. As I write this this morning, a school bus rolls over our modest hill. The dew soaks the zinnias in the backyard. The chickens clatter inside their little white coops. Thank you, real estate agent mom.
more:OPINION: When spring arrives in Asheville, you’ll want an affordable home to grow a garden.
more:OPINION: Learn how to put down the phone and focus on your kids.
Chelsea Bose lives in Arden and works as a writer for World Kids Magazine in Biltmore Village.