A sale I am working on took an interesting turn this week when a frazzled seller notified me that two racoons had been tearing through the second floor of the home we are closing on. Just when you think you have heard everything! I immediately reached out to the buyer informing them of the situation, assuring them that all was being taken care of and properly restored. Every home has its own little story and this reminded me of a client who encountered a different kind of “intrusion” post purchase.
About two weeks after moving into her new home, I bumped into my lovely first time home buyer at a wedding between mutual friends. She looked tired and seemed a bit on edge.
Concerned, I went up to her and asked if everything was ok. “I really didn’t want to bother you about something strange happening in the house.” She went on to say that every night when both she and her husband got into bed and everything quieted down in the house, it would begin… a creak in the wall, a rustle in the ceiling, a low whistling sound …
“What’s that sound?” she would ask her husband. On the first night, she wasn’t sure if he said it as a joke or maybe it was the first thing that popped into his head, but those four dreaded words came out of his mouth. “Maybe it’s a mouse?” She told me she hasn’t slept since.
As a realtor my involvement in home sales is mostly during the daytime or early evening hours when there is noise coming from different directions: i.e. conversations between customers, a washing machine churning on the second floor or a landscaper across the street. I am almost never showing homes when the day is truly over and everyone has gone to sleep. I’m referring to that time of day right before you close your eyes, nothing is moving in the house and then you start to hear noises … noises of a ticking clock, noises of the dishwasher in the kitchen. Every house “owns” its own unique sounds.
I think anyone who has moved into a new home can relate to this. There is that unfamiliar period of time when everything is still so new and fresh (like not knowing which light switch controls what). You discover the way the sun shines into each room, the way a certain tree looks outside the den window which you hadn’t noticed before. And, of course, the sounds that every house is bound to make, especially at night when even the faintest of noises are discernable.
Though I’m sure there has been a mouse or two in some of our local homes, I knew that the sounds in question that my young buyer was describing were not the sounds of mice.
After confirming that she had already had an exterminator check this out only to find no evidence of mice, I suggested that she touch base with the home inspector she had previously hired. He would have a better chance of clarifying the source of the noise. Sure enough, Mike went into the parents’ bedroom and waited and waited until the sound occurred. “That is the wood contracting in between the walls,” he declared. He explained that the heating pipes running to the radiator heated up the wood in the walls which made them expand. When the heat went off and the pipes cooled the wood began losing its heat and would slowly contract, making the faintest popping sounds that you would only hear in your bed at night when the house is silent.
Eventually we all become accustomed to the sounds of our homes, and if we are happy in them, the little noises we hear only endear them to us more.
Nechama Polak is the broker of record and owner of V&N Group LLC, located at 1401 Palisade Avenue in Teaneck. Send your thoughts and comments to [email protected] or call 201 826 8809.
