Welcome to Homeownership — April Showers

April showers bring May flowers. This week: the showers. Next week: the flowers. Or at least, that's the plan.

We're taking a break from the how-to content and settling in with some hot tea — the most expensive tea in the world, apparently, which smells faintly of cannabis, was purchased by Alissa for Katy's birthday as a Suits reference, and we'll just leave it at that.

This is a storytime episode. The theme is homeownership is hard. We share personal stories, client stories, and a general reminder that when your buyers call you three months after closing because something went wrong, the appropriate response is "welcome to homeownership" — and then give them a resource or two.

Here's what we cover in this episode:

- The couple who changed their countertops every ten years — and why Katy now thinks of home maintenance like a wardrobe - Why Katy was nervous to follow up with buyers after closing because the stories were never blissful - Katy's brand new first home with not a single stitch of insulation in the attic — and the builder who delivered it to the wrong house on their street - Jay installing surround sound and stepping through the living room ceiling - Alissa's wallpaper discovery: peeled back the ugly wallpaper only to find even uglier ducks-in-bonnets wallpaper underneath - Rye grass kills centipede: the accidental grass death that led to Katy ripping out her entire backyard this spring - Why you have to renovate your landscape just like you renovate the inside of your house - Yearly home maintenance: exterior paint, caulk around windows, dryer vents, vent boots on roofs, checking baseboards in wet areas - The shower faucet that wasn't caulked and slowly dripped behind the wall for five years until Jay pulled out five gallons of standing water from a closet - Alissa's drainage problem in her first house and the oak trees that came with it - Parapet walls and stucco in Louisiana: beautiful, but absolutely wrong for our climate and weather - Wood-framed windows required by an HOA — and why every house in that neighborhood has eventually had to rip them all out - Crape myrtle roots growing into main plumbing lines - The water oak older than the house: would you prefer to be crushed or sunken into the earth? (The buyer cancelled.) - In-ground pool physics: why you can't fully drain an inground pool in Louisiana or it will pop out of the ground like a cork - The leaky shower drain that turned a baseboard a funny color — and the handy husband who found it was just a gasket - Alissa's dishwasher leaking under the cabinets this week (she thinks) - The vacant house analogy: houses die without eyes on them; things compound when no one is paying attention - Have your home inspected even if you're not moving — the smart inspector who pitched this during the slow market - Alissa's AC disaster: a nail from the accent wall hit a line behind the wall — choice was rip out the wall or reroute everything on the exterior - Termites running behind pavers straight into Katy's best friend's wall — crumbling baseboard, no damage coverage in the HOA termite contract - The buyer's AC that died three months after closing — and why Alissa refused to call the listing agent on their behalf because the sellers met all contractual obligations - The house crushed by a tree during Hurricane Ida: the couple who had just renovated by hand, left with their cat and dog, went to the neighbor's house — and what happened when the house was totaled (mortgage paid off, lot was theirs, construction loan, new house so much better) - Bats in Louisiana: protected species, $5,000 fine per bat, the bat exterminator who doesn't exterminate (just rehomes with funnels), and how Alissa watched them fly out from under a shingle at dusk - Katy's bat in Colorado: woke up, bat fell out of the light fixture, hid on the balcony, made a fruit trail with apple slices, called a 20-year-old coworker for advice, bat flew out for the apples - The townhome with a water closet door that can't close if you're actually sitting on the toilet - Alissa's buyer who found out months after moving in that the previous owner had died in the garage - Mold that appeared on ceilings after the first heavy rain because the area was dry and invisible during inspection - Client with a green pool who thought the seller did it (no, pools just go green) - HOA dues going up, property taxes, insurance, and all the joyful surprises of homeownership - The wrong house story: builder poured the slab for the wrong floor plan — bigger than they chose — and gave the buyers every upgrade imaginable as a sorry - New Orleans police department news story: rats eating the evidence (cannabis) in the building. A fitting end for an episode that started with cannabis tea. - Next week: May flowers

Toast of the week from Valerie Gonzalez in Bryan, Texas, toasting Jennifer Clark — her bestie, her teammate, and her Hustle Humbly family crew. Cheers to Jennifer!

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