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hydroponicjj · 4 years

Text

pinky promise

pairing: jj maybank x reader

word count: 3.1k (i’ve never written anything this long before lmao)

warnings: swearing

summary: your birthday takes place over quarantine and because you can’t have an actual birthday party, the pogues host a netflix party for you but an unexpected guest joins which ruins the mood. jj decides to cheer you up from a distance.

a/n: hello!! i know i’ve been a little m.i.a. but, i promise that i’m back. send me some outer banks requests and i’ll be happy to do them (no smut pls) also, if you’ve sent a request recently, i’m working on em :) gif credit goes to hvitstark!!!

y/n/n “your nickname”

「 ₊˚.༄ 」

When summer first began, you as well as the rest of the pogues were overwhelmed with excitement. You didn't have to do homework, get stressed with school, take exams. Nothing.

The plans weren't set in stone but all of you had a general idea of what you’d do from day to day. From surfing to eating at The Wreck, there was nothing that could stop you and your friends from having the best summer ever.

All of you had seen news articles, talking about a deadly virus entering the United States. It first appeared in Washington, then slowly started to spread around the vicinity. But no one in the Outer Banks of North Carolina was concerned.

So, the beginning of summer break started with absolutely no delay.

After the first couple of weeks of the virus spreading across the country, slowly but surely, you watched as people started to get worried. It got to the point were you mother was cautioning you before going to hang out with the rest of the pogues.

“I pinky promise that I’ll be safe!” You’d tease before going outside and hopping into John B’s Volkswagen.

When you hopped into the back of the van, you noticed the disappointed looks on everyone’s faces while Pope was rambling (like he usually does).

“I really think that we should start to prepare because I think that this virus is very similar to the Black Death.” He finished, taking a deep breath.

“What’s up?” You greeted, raised eyebrows in confusion.

Pope smiled enthusiastically and gave you a warm welcome while the others groaned like a walker from The Walking Dead.

“What are you babbling on about today, Mr.Heyward?” You questioned.

“He literally won’t shut up about this stupid virus!” Kiara answered for him, resting her head on the window as she sat in the front seat.

“Neither will my mom. She’s all worked about this and telling me to ‘be safe’ before leaving the house.” You explained.

“It’s not like we know anyone that’s sick.” John B shrugged, starting the van.

Seconds later, JJ started to have a coughing attack. He literally couldn’t stop, even after he had multiple sips of water.

Both you and Pope moved to the corner farthest away from him, you were laughing because you knew JJ and his personality while Pope was terrified.

“Holy shit, he has it.” He whispered in your ear, eyes as big as a Watermelon.

“He’s about to cough up a lung.” Kie commented, turning around to see the blonde flopping around like a fish.

After a few more seconds, JJ recovered from his coughing attack and sat up, a huge smile plastered on his face.

“Not funny!” Pope screamed, kicking the bottom of his foot.

“You should have seen your face, it was priceless.” He chuckled.

You crawled over to JJ and rested your head in his lap, arms crossed over your stomach as you cackled, “Oh my gosh, that was hilarious.” You raised your hand and gave him a high five, intertwining for fingers and bringing it back down to your chest.

“I only did it because Pope needs a reality check. In a couple weeks everything will be fine.” He sighed, using his other hand to take the lighter out of his pocket and light the blunt between his teeth.

Before he could, you held out your left hand which was your way of asking him to place the items in your palm because no one was interested in getting a contact high at 2 pm.

Usually the rest of the pogues would snatch it from him but you were different. You didn’t feel comfortable being rough with him because you knew about his life at home and you didn’t want to set him off.

That was one of the many things that JJ appreciated about you. You were gentle with him and always took your time, not wanting to him to feel rushed. So, he always complied when you asked.

“Fuck it, I’m taking all the toilet paper.” Pope commented out of context, causing everyone to laugh.

「 ₊˚.༄ 」

Fast forward one week later and your entire life has flipped upside down.

Covid-19 shut down absolutely everything. Kie and her family were forced to close down The Wreck because they couldn't take the risk of hurting any customers or members of the staff.

All of your friends were separated, except for JJ and John B because they quarantined together, not wanting to be alone during this time.

To be honest, you missed everyone, especially JJ because the two of you always gravitated towards each other so it was pretty hard to be separate from him.

To stay connected with each other, you all texted in the shared group chat and had group facetime’s and netflix parties almost every single night.

John B insisted on inviting Sarah and you didn’t know how to feel about it. Sarah and Kie did squash their beef but, she told you all of the things that happened and it really rubbed you the wrong way. But, you wanted John B to be happy, no matter who it was with.

“Holy shit, y/n/n your birthday is in 2 days!” JJ noticed while the two of you were on facetime. John B was busy talking to Sarah so, he called you to pass the time.

“Yeah.” You replied, unenthusiasticlly.

“I know it sucks that we’re in quarantine but, I promise we’ll have a group facetime and you can pick the movie.” He smiled, you didn’t even have to elaborate on why you were sad because he knew you that well.

“Wait for real?” You laughed.

Listen, everyone has different taste when it comes to movies so, every time that you’re doing a netflix party, it’s really hard to decide on a movie that all of the pogues can enjoy.

“Okay, now I’m excited. This is going to be so fun!” You screeched, clapping your hands together.

“Shit, John B’s calling me. I’ve gotta go but, keep that same enthusiasm, okay?” He replied, smiling into the camera.

“Pinky promise.” You gave him the biggest grin known to man before hanging up.

「 ₊˚.༄ 」

Exactly two days later, you woke up to your mom towering over you with a cake in her hands, “Happy 17th birthday, y/n/n!” She took JJ’s lighter that was sitting on your nightstand and lit the ‘17’ on the cake.

“Woah!” You said, rubbing your eyes. It was still pretty early in the morning and you couldn’t fully comprehend what was going on.

“Thank you so much.” You sat up in your bed, making room for your mother to sit.

“Make a wish.” She encouraged, taking out her phone to capture the moment.

“I wish that I have the best day ever, despite not being about to see my friends.” and with that, you blew out the candles, smiling up at your mom.

“Awe were you recording that?” You smiled, covering your face.

“I was gonna send it to your friends,” She paused, “Speaking of them, are you gonna uh... party on neflix tonight?” She squinted.

You chuckled, your mom really wasn’t as aquatinted with technology as other parents, “Yeah, the 5 of us are gonna watch a movie on facetime. I promise to keep it down.”

“Thank you. I’m gonna go start on breakfast. I’ll call you when it’s finished.” She left your room, leaving the door cracked slightly.

After a few seconds of staring off into space, you checked your phone like you always do when you wake up and your phone was filled with notifications.

Your smiled from ear to ear. Unlike the average kook, you weren’t very popular but that didn’t matter because you had 4 of the best people on planet earth as your best friends.

The first thing that you checked was Instagram. You tapped through the stories that you were tagged in and were met with some of the best memories that were caught on camera.

From the time you accidentally set off the sprinklers at The Wreck, getting all of the customers wet as they were leaving to the time that you got stuck at the top of the monkey bars at your old elementary school and JJ had to come and save you.

You almost started crying because you hadn’t been apart from any of your friends for more that 12 hours and even though it’s only been a week, it felt like forvever.

Before you responded to the countless amount of texts from your aunts and uncles, you texted the group chat and gushed to them about how thankful you were that they all posted something in honor of your birthday.

They all politely told you to and I quote, “shut the fuck up.” because it was a given that they’d praise you for your special day.

You rolled your eyes with a smile on your face and threw your phone on the charger, heading to the kitchen to eat breakfast with your mother.

「 ₊˚.༄ 」

The sound of your phone ringing tore you away from the piece of cake that you were chewing.

“And the guest of honor has arrived!” John B gushed, JJ was sitting next to him and it looked like they were on the couch.

“Get any presents?” Kie asked, positioning her phone upwards so that she could be seen.

“Nah, unless you count cake.” You chuckled, showing them the piece that you were currently devouring.

“That looks so good.” Pope commented, he was staring into the camera, hypnotized by the sweet treat that you had just showcased.

“Snap out of it!” JJ started clapping his hands in the camera causing Pope to fidget slightly taking his face out of the camera.

You spent the first 30 minutes of the facetime call catching up about the stupid quarantine habits that you all picked up.

Kiara had given herself a few dolphin stick & pokes, Pope had started online shopping, like a lot. He had at least 30 new t-shirts in his closet. John B calls Sarah while JJ spends most of his time talking to you.

“Wait, wait, wait guys,” You paused, trying to get their attention because they were all screaming at each other, “Are y’all ready to watch the movie?” You questioned, opening a new tab on your computer.

“Yeah, yeah. Wait a second.” John B put himself on paused, you could hear JJ sigh because he does that at least once every time that you all are on a group call.

After a few seconds, you heard everyone's phone ding as well as your own. You all had gotten a group e-mail to join a netflix party. At first you were confused because JJ said that he talked to everyone and they agreed to letting you chose the movie.

A few more seconds passed and you saw another square begin to connect to the facetime call. It was a number that no one recognized so, everyone was pretty stunned (except for john b).

The mystery person finally connected and it was revealed to be Sarah Cameron.

You looked at everyone's little square and saw how wide their eyes were. JJ seemed furious but, he didn’t want to make a scene because after all, it was still your birthday.

Kie and Pope looked shocked that John B would add her without asking if you were okay with it first.

“Hey guys! Happy birthday, y/n.” Sarah greeted, smiling.

“Thank you.” You croaked back a response, going on your computer and opening the e-mail that was sent, clicking the netflix party link.

After taking a second to load, you saw that you were watching the 4th season of Riverdale. (yikes)

You rolled your eyes, praying that it went unnoticed.

“Is this what you wanted to watch, y/n? I thought you hated Riverdale?” Pope asked, still a little confused on the whole situation.

“Nope.” You stated dryly, shrugging you shoulders and falling back onto your bed.

“Oh, it was my idea.” Sarah chimed in, her bubble got bigger because she had said something, “You don’t mind, right y/n/n?”

“I kind of wanted to watch Back to the Future.” You revealed.

At this point, everyone was shocked, even you. You didn’t hate Sarah, she was currently being really nice but you wanted to spend your birthday talking to your best friends and she didn’t fit into that category yet.

“I don’t really like that movie.” John B commented, earning a slap on the back of the head from JJ.

“Actually,” You paused, contemplating if you even wanted to continue the sentence. You had two options, make a scene or leave peacefully.

“I’m not feeling to well. I think I’m going to go but, have fun watching Riverdale.” Before anyone could protest, you hung up.

Option two it is.

“Fuck birthday’s.” You concluded, turning off your light. You didn’t have the energy to argue with anyone so, you decided to go to bed and deal with it in the morning.

JJ muted the phone so that no one else could hear the conversation that was about to ensue, “Dude, what the fuck?!” He yelled at John B, who was very confused.

“You invited the girl you’ve been mackin’ on for a month to y/n’s birthday party. Did you even ask her?” He stood up, towering over his friend.

“Woah, woah, calm down. I didn’t think that she’d care.” He defended himself.

Pope and Kie were texting you while Sarah was too busy watching the cringe unfold on Riverdale that they didn’t notice that John B and JJ were arguing.

“All she wanted was a good birthday and you fucking ruined it.” He accused, poking at his chest.

“I didn’t ruin it. She was tired and had to go!”

“It’s literally 9:30 pm. You think she’d go to bed this early? We’re in quarantine! Everyone stays up till like, 5!”

The look on JJ’s face conveyed that he was seconds away from punching John B in the face but he had to remember that you wouldn’t want them fighting because of you.

The blonde took a deep breath that lasted at least 5 minutes, “I need to go check on her.” He stated, going into the guest room that he was currently residing in and grabbed a big basket but with how fast he was walking, it’d be impossible to make out the contents inside.

“You can’t go see her, we’re in quarantine.” John B protested but JJ didn’t seem to care.

「 ₊˚.༄ 」

The sun started peaking through your window at around 6 am. The heat of the sun beamed on your face, causing you to wake up earlier that you anticipated.

Groaning, you trudged to the one and only bathroom in your house, thankful that your mom was off to work. She works for Mr.Heyward and they’re currently trying to deliver supplies to as many people as possible.

After getting ready for the day in the restroom, you headed towards the kitchen. In your peripheral vision, you saw a big basket sitting on your front porch.

Peaking your interest, you opened your front door and grabbed the basket with two hands. It wasn’t that heavy but it appeared to be filled to the brim.

Perched on the very top of the basket was a ripped sheet of blank paper covered with medium sized writing. The penmanship was sloppy and certain words had been written over and over again, most likely because the marker was running out of ink.

Based on the lack of punctuation, you already knew who hand delivered this package.

On the inside was 3 of JJ’s shirts (without the sleeves ofc), a half empty bottle of cologne that he’d only wear on special occasions, a torn 2 dollar bill, and a hydroponic blunt.

If any other pogue was receiving this as a gift, they’d probably be really disappointed but, not you. You knew that JJ wasn’t well acquainted with showing and or receiving love so, this was a huge gesture.

Running back into your house, you grabbed your phone, ignoring all of the apology texts from John B, you facetimed JJ.

After a few seconds of it ringing, he answered, “What time is it?” He groaned.

“When did you deliver this?” You asked, ignoring his question.

“What are you talking about?” He didn’t falter, standing his ground.

“Don’t play dumb with me, JJ. What time did you put this on my doorstep?” You persisted, showing the poorly wrapped package that rested on your dining table.

“I genuinely don’t know what you’re talking about.” He chuckled, scratching the back of his head.

You squinted your eyes into the camera and waited a few seconds and sure enough, he creaked, “Fine, fine! I may or may not have decided to play mail man last night.”

“What the heck-?” You paused, attempting to take in what he had just said, “Wait, why?”

“Well, after Sarah crashed your birthday party, I thought you might want to wake up to something, uh, nice.” He grinned, awkwardly.

“You should’ve called me! I would’ve come outside to see you.” You replied, disappointed. He was mere feet away from you last night and you weren’t aware.

“Social distancing, y/n.” He teased. We all know that JJ is the pogue that’s most likely to accidentally break one of the rules during quarantine.

“JJ,” You took a deep breath, “Why did you all of this. I mean, it’s such an amazing birthday gift. A blunt and a 2 dollar bill, what more could a girl ask for?”

“IT’S BECAUSE HE LOOOOVES YOU!!” You heard John B scream from farther into the house.

JJ dropped the phone on the bed and put himself on mute, you shook your head, knowing he was most likely scolding John B.

“I’m sorry, he’s been spending to much time with Sarah.” He returned, “Also, I stole that bill from Kie, don’t tell her though.”

“I really really really miss you, JJ.” You sighed, frowning.

“I really really really miss you, y/n.” He mocked, of course he could not be 100% serious, even when he wanted too.

“Can you promise me something?”

He raised his eyebrows, face plastered with curiousness, “Uhhh, maybe.” He chuckled.

“Promise me that you’ll ask me out once quarantine is over?” You deadpanned. It was clear that it caught him by surprise because his face wasn’t covered with confusion anymore but shear terror instead.

“W-What was that John B???!!! You fell in the toilet! Awe shit, y/n, I’ve gotta go.” He replied, hanging up the phone.

Usually, you’d be a little offended but, you knew he was just messing around with you, especially because he was so used to making the first move when it came to getting girls.

Your phone was on silent so, you didn’t notice it a first but you had a new text message from JJ.

“pinky promise.”

#jj maybank #jj maybank x reader #outer banks #netflix #outer banks fic #jj maybank fic #jey's oneshots #rudy pankow #john b routledge #pope heyward #kiara carrera #sarah cameron #rafe cameron #imagine #outer banks imagine

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drtanstravels · 4 years

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Note: This post was written over the course of many months, beginning on Friday, May 3, 2019. To document as accurately as possible the entire excruciating process, I just kept adding more and more to it as events unfolded. I was initially going to cover both our experiences with buying and selling an apartment in Singapore, however, as we encountered seemingly perpetual red tape, endless delays, and the process as a whole dragged on, this piece got painfully long so I decided to edit into two separate parts, thus far resulting in this still rather lengthy first chapter solely about selling our apartment. Enjoy.

We decided quite a while ago to buy a new apartment and, despite how long it has taken, we initially thought it would be a lengthier process, because the plan was to also keep our current place and rent it out. If we sell our current apartment, we achieve our goals about two years earlier and don’t have to deal with the stress that coincides with being landlords, however, that doesn’t free us of the burden of dealing with real estate agents. The bulk of these people in Singapore are just awful, plain and simple. Okay, we initially encountered a couple while selling that weren’t too bad and the pair that ultimately got the job done were fantastic. I have previously written about what we went through to simply rent an apartment in New York City, but selling one and buying another in Singapore isn’t a whole lot of fun, either. So, what makes dealing with the bulk of Singaporean real estate agents so bad? Well, there are the obvious lies and deception that come hand-in-hand with making major secondhand purchases, but it’s usually used car dealers who get the bad rap, however, as you keep reading, particularly when I’ve finished writing the next chapter about buying an apartment, you’ll learn that the word “room” can mean almost anything to a Singaporean estate agent. Then there are the endless personal questions and comments that these awkward, giggling, little socially-stunted people make that have absolutely nothing to do with them or the process of buying or selling a house. Add to this them ignoring all regular communal time constraints when calling or messaging you, and you’ll be pulling your hair out within days.

Anna initially put our house on the market on Tuesday, April 23, 2019 and I was originally going to begin writing this piece when the entire process was completed, but in under two weeks I had accrued so many weird anecdotes and tidbits that I felt I was going to forget some nugget of gold that had occured during this entire course of action. Instead, I compiled the stories that took place as they happened instead of just putting them into the notes on my phone, until this entire debacle was completed. As you will find out, we painfully tolerated some real estate agents when we were looking at apartments to buy, which was almost immediately after we had put our place on the market. However, the only way these people can get any worse is when you have something of which they know they can make a nice little commission, the standard market rate in Singapore being 2%. When Anna first listed our place for sale she used my phone number as the main point of contact. Now, here I sit, writing this portion over two weeks later on Friday, May 10, 2019 and I have kept my phone on silent the entire time due to the constant calls and messages from real estate agents that were late to the party, yet still want a piece of the action. Here’s an example of one I received yesterday:

So much to decipher there; is his or her name Adnic? Anna told me that PN stands for PropNex, “Singapore’s largest listed real estate agency,” but why would I want this person coming over on a Saturday morning when each entire week spent dealing with these people leads to a big Friday night being required in order to de-stress and unwind? And who the hell is this Angie to whom they wish to speak? Anyway, Anna had dinner with some of her family on the Wednesday, the day after listing the property, and her auntie has bought and sold many apartments in Singapore, as well as overseas, so she gave Anna some advice and also listed our place in Singapore’s national daily newspaper, The Straits Times. Needless to say my phone blew up the next day and these people are like the hybrid of a vulture and a leech. My day consisted of just constant calls and messages, the calls mostly impossible to understand speed-mumbling and the messages indecipherable and full of typos, the example above being par for the course. Some would call four or five times in a row, hoping to get an answer, others would send a followup message just minutes after their initial message just to see if I had received it, because they still hadn’t heard back from me yet. In fact, one of them even sent me a bunch of articles about himself, some of them in Mandarin and from almost four years prior:

His mother definitely has this on the fridge

You know he has this framed somewhere

Anna was home when the phone first started ringing and it was her suggestion that I should ignore the calls and just respond to messages, which suited me fine. Still, real estate agents here want exclusive rights to your apartment, meaning that they can be the only person to market it, but we didn’t want that so Anna and myself had to devise a standard response to each of these messages that I was receiving in order to find the agents that were at least attempting to be legit. This is what Anna came up with and saved it in the notes in my phone so I just had to copy and paste the the top portion as a reply to each message:

Hi, in order for us to authorise you as our agent;

Please advise if you are an exclusive agent or can do open market, and

What is your lowest commission rate?

In the interest of convenience, please continue to communicate via message/WhatsApp.

(If they say non-exclusive and can offer a rate in writing of 2% or less, we can send them the pics and unit no.

Asking price $XXX,XXX)

I was copying and pasting this reply so frequently that I made the mistake of copying the entire thing, including the section in brackets, and sending it to a couple of agents before realising my mistake and quickly deleting it. If we received the answer from an agent as outlined in the underlined section that was intended for my eyes only, they would then receive the following message:

Thanks for your interest, we will be free to let you view our apartment and take photos on Tuesday or Thursday, 1-5pm. Please SMS to confirm viewing.

It was all getting a bit much and we would need to clean up before people viewed our apartment the following week so I went out shopping to get some of the supplies we would need. While I was out I received a phone call and figured it would just be Anna so I answered without looking. It turned out to be one of the vulture-leeches, he was in the area and wanted to speak to us personally. I told him I would be home in 30 minutes and he agreed to meet me at our place for what I assumed was an opportunity to have a look through the apartment and get some pictures early. Nope, he just wanted to give me his spiel on letting him have exclusive rights to the apartment, however, he did raise some good points. I let him know that Anna is the main breadwinner and decision maker in this process so it would be best if he spoke to her, but he’d need to wait until she returned home from work. He hung out alone at the nearby shopping mall until Anna was home and then went through his exclusivity speech again to Anna, pointing out that open market sale wasn’t an option for him, he only does exclusive sales. We said we would talk over his offer, which had its pros and cons, and then get back to him, but after discussing it we decided against his offer of exclusivity. He messaged me the following night, Friday, to ask if we had talked about it, and this was where I learnt two valuable lessons about him and most other real estate agents trying to sell properties:

He was full of shit.

He truly couldn’t care less what time he contacted me.

Despite previously saying that he only does exclusive sales, he had no problem with trying to sell on the open market when he realised we wouldn’t use him otherwise. Also, he would continue to hassle me the entire weekend, going as far as messaging me at 11:00pm on Sunday night! Here are some of the highlights of what I continued to receive over the course of the weekend, check out the times of some of them:

Desperation is a stinky cologne! I wouldn’t even message my own parents that late on a Sunday night, and you can see that there is a deleted message toward the end, because this guy was pissing me off so badly that I initially responded a little less diplomatically so Anna ultimately wrote that final reply. Still, when someone tries to point out that you don’t appreciate being contacted on that day or at that time, it takes a special kind of stupid to reply to the message. On a later occasion he texted me at 3:30am, beginning his message with an apology for contacting me at that time, but he was worried he’d forget what he wanted to ask me if he waited. Just write it down and inquire later in our agreed upon timeframe!

Monday was just as stressful, constantly dealing with real estate agents’ phone calls and messages, as well as cleaning up the place, trying to rearrange the clutter. I also cooked dinner that night and accidentally knocked a bottle of olive oil off our extremely small bench, smashing it on the ground and covering the floor with oil and shards of glass. To make matters worse, we had run out of floor cleaner so after I finished picking up as much broken glass as I could find without slipping over, I had to find a place that sold floor cleaner at 9:30pm and mop the house, putting me in a rather bad mood that ultimately scared the dog.

Tuesday was finally here and I started getting our place into the best shape I could quite early. Nobody was supposed to arrive until 1:00pm, however, the first agent showed up at 12:30pm and complained about why I hadn’t finished cleaning and that I wasn’t ready for him. I politely reminded him that I wasn’t expecting anyone for at least another 30 minutes, but he just told me he could give me tips on tidying and then started to unplug all of our devices and rearrange our furniture until I put a stop to that. He said our apartment needed to look “less cluttered, less lived in,” so I then passive-aggressively explained to him that, unfortunately for him, we still do live in it and the reason we are selling is that, although we love our current apartment, we have just outgrown it and the place simply isn’t big enough, there isn’t space for everything, but we’ll need to continue to live there until it is sold and achieving that is his role in the whole situation. It’s a nice apartment at a decent price in a highly-sought after part of town, if he can’t sell it, maybe he should try another line of work. Anyway, he spent the next hour filming our property and taking photos, not letting me in the same room as him and not allowing any of the agents that came at the correct time to enter the apartment, instead forcing them to stand in the stairwell in the heat. He even whined that out house is too dark and I need to find a way to make it lighter, especially the bedroom. Yes, that’s because we sleep in there, not use it as a photo-booth, and it’s kind of ironic that he described the place as “bright” in his video. He was an obnoxious douche and was more than a little liberal with the truth, but the video he put together (which is no longer available) wasn’t too bad and if he one day allows me to teach him pronunciation, grammar, and sentence structure, I may just take some of his decluttering tips.

Many more real estate agents arrived over the course of the day, most of them polite, some quite critical, and pretty much all of them trying to make the same jokes and starting the same conversations; “How’s the weather up there?” and, “Have you eaten?” were all questions I had to answer multiple times, as was making up excuses for where Anna was and that’s where I made my biggest faux pas. The agents always try to get personal information out of you, especially about income, which is none of their business when we’re using them to sell our apartment. There was no problem with me telling any agents that I’m a freelance writer, but Anna didn’t want any of them knowing what she does for a living, because they might try to lowball us on our place if they knew she was a surgeon. The first time an agent asked where she worked, I kind of panicked, leading to this exchange:

Agent: “So, where is your wife?” Me: “At work.” Agent: “Oh, where does she work?” Me: “Near the hospital.” Agent: “Oh, what does she do, is she a nurse? A doctor?” Me (kind of panicking): “Canteen.”

It didn’t help that Anna used to do pole dancing for exercise a few years ago and we still have the pole in our house. “So, is your wife a dancer, too?” she asked in a very judging manner. Yes, now this particular real estate agent thinks that I’m married to a stripper that also needs to work in a hospital canteen during the day to make ends meet. Another agent asked if the pole was to hold the ceiling up and could it be removed. God, some of them are dumb, we live on the third floor of a four-storey building, I’d be equally worried for the people that live above us if that were the case!

It’s now the first week of June, 2019 and we’ve had some agents bring people to check out our apartment. We’ve had around 10 different potential buyers look through, but it only seems to be the same two or three real estate agents out of all of the ones marketing it that are getting the people in. Our apartment clearly has an industrial design, however, one of the first agents who showed people through described it as “countrysides look.” Firstly, I don’t think the word ‘countryside’ can be pluralised and secondly, a countryside design would be the complete opposite of industrial. When I hear “countryside” I picture lace curtains, doilies, vases of flowers, floorboards, that type of thing, not exposed bricks and beams to go with the mostly cement floor. He also told the people that we had vinyl flooring in the living room when that portion is clearly marble, one of the only remaining original features of the entire apartment from before we renovated it when we first purchased the place seven years ago. Was he even trying? The agent who made the video of our house, a film that was apparently based on a true story, contacted me on Friday, June 7 to tell me that he had some people who wanted to look through our apartment the following day and was wondering if our place had two bathrooms. It took all of my energy to refrain from telling him that the answer is in that stupid little movie that he made and instead told him it has only one. He then asked how many bathrooms our neighbour’s place had! I wouldn’t recognise my neighbours if I saw them in the street, let alone know how many toilets they have, but I assume it would be the same amount as us, as all of the apartments in our building were built with an identical floor-plan. He also asked what time on Saturday suited me best so I told him 3:00pm, but on Saturday morning I received a message saying that he would see me at 2:30, half an hour earlier again, but at least he told me this time, unlike the day he made his home movie. Before long it was 2:20pm and my stomach was starting to cramp, I had to go to our only bathroom urgently, but I was also worried that he may arrive earlier than the agreed upon time again, on this occasion while I was in a rather compromising situation. Fortunately, I managed to complete my business quickly with enough time remaining for the aroma to adequately dissipate and the viewing went off without a hitch, however, the agent had grown a really bad moustache since we had last met.

When you’re looking at spending every cent you have on an apartment, there is an endless list of questions you could ask — Does the traffic get noisy? How much hot water does the current tank give? Have any murders ever been committed there? For some reason though, we kept getting asked the same two questions time and time again from potential buyers;

Which direction does the apartment face?

What race are our neighbours?

The second question seems to be a real selling point in Singapore and the potential buyers asking this are always relieved to find out that our neighbours are all Singaporean-Chinese. People here can be a tad biased at times and I still have no idea why, but many in this country don’t want to live anywhere near members of particular races or nationalities. I’m sure, though, that they wouldn’t have any problems with the eccentric, old Singaporean-Chinese guy that lives behind us who usually wears nothing but a faded old towel or sometimes his clothes on backwards, meditating outside on mouldy, discarded office furniture, testicles swaying in the breeze, surrounded by a fort of more hanging towels, as well as having banana peels, clam shells, and other meticulously arranged, but ultimately unusable food items drying on the ground outside his apartment full of clutter, trash, and plastic bags. His joint is constantly infested with rats and they are always running around the general vicinity of his apartment, but he’s fine:

A visit from some government officials while resplendent in a faded towel, as seen from our kitchen window

Maybe he got in a fight with the rats and they kicked him out on this particular night

The irony is that his place is worth a fortune!

From his point of view

I really wish I had a marker at the time to draw a moustache

Today is Monday, July 29, 2019 and we’ve had quite a few people look at our apartment, but no official offers, the main complaint being that, despite being listed as a “walk-up” apartment, it doesn’t have an elevator, some viewers even perplexed at this exclusion, because climbing two small flights of stairs is just too much effort for many. Why bother even looking at it at all? We also realised that it has been the same four or five agents getting people to look at our apartment and they suggested that we get the agents that haven’t done anything to take their listings down from property websites to avoid saturation, which isn’t a bad idea. This morning I sent those agents the following message:

Hi _____,

My wife and I own the property you have listed at 20 Tiong Bahru Rd. I am writing to request that, due to a complete lack of viewers, that you cease to list our property. This is not open to negotiation.

Thank you, Tim Abel

Most of them just did it and replied to let me know, which was appreciated, but one decided to call me and try to weasel his way out of it, which went something like this:

Agent: “Good day, sir, in reference to your message, what I’ve been doing is collating all of the offers on your property in order to ascertain what –” Me: “YOU HAVEN’T BROUGHT A SINGLE PERSON TO OUR PLACE IN THREE MONTHS, TAKE THE LISTING DOWN!” *click*

These guys are terrified of complaints that will damage their reputation so almost immediately after I hung up on him I received a text message that said:

Hi tim.will abide. Apologise n tks

I think that translates into “Hi, Tim, I will take the listing down as per your request. Apologies and thank you.”

Fast forward to what is now mid-December, 2019 and we’re still sitting here, waiting to sell our apartment. We ended up going with one of the female agents as an exclusive agent and she initially brought a reasonable amount of people around to our place to have a look, but even her interest waned over time to the point where she didn’t even have our place listed toward the end. Fortunately her contracted period as our exclusive agent expired. We did receive a couple of offers, but they were either quite low or rescinded after the people who made them opted for a different apartment. We ultimately chose to go with a pair of other agents at the recommendation of a friend who was able to sell her place quite quickly, instead of going through all of this hassle. To try to make the process go even smoother with these guys, I went on a crazy decluttering spree, spending many hours of many days going through certain areas of the apartment and just throwing stuff out, much to the behest of my lower back. Anna chipped in on the day the agents came to take photos and videos, managing to throw out five shopping bags full of old shoes alone, as well as several boxes of books. This cleaning process resulted in us finding some items we had completely forgotten about or didn’t even know we had. A good example is that we can never find a pen that works when we need one, yet I found three unused and rather expensive pens still in their boxes that were gifts at some of Anna’s conferences. The absolute highlight for me though, had to be two books Anna wrote in primary school, the first when she was about seven years old, detailing her family’s trip to California with interesting tidbits such as finding her cousin’s bra, her friend playing with it, and then putting it on her soft-toys. The other book was a mystery about a kidnapping and ransom, written when she was roughly eleven or so:

Anna’s artistic abilities haven’t really evolved

This might help explain why we watch so much Law & Order: SVU

As a result of all of this cleaning and carrying so many loads of heavy items down to the bins downstairs, I was barely been able to stand upright properly for a few days, plus all of the dust that had been stirred up as a result had us constantly sneezing, but it did feel nice having less crap around the place. As a result I wasn’t looking forward to the whole moving process, but that wouldn’t happening anytime soon.

The agents came around on Saturday, December 13, 2019, took their photos and videos, as well as sat down and had a chat to us, these guys actually asking questions and showing a genuine interest, so that was a good sign. They also informed us that this time of year isn’t a good one for the housing market so it probably wouldn’t be until January or February until we hear anything, but an online virtual walkthrough of our place was still put up on their website on Monday, December 15, 2019. From Saturday, January 4, 2020 we had a steady flow of viewers for our house and it wasn’t just people who were bored on the weekend and had decided to spend it snooping through other people’s apartments, these ones seemed genuinely interested in purchasing, and by Tuesday, January 21, 2020 we had accepted an offer and sold our place! What nobody else could achieve in eight months, our new agents pulled off in one, a month that happened to include the Christmas and New Year period, as well as being just prior to Chinese New Year. Pretty impressive.

This now left us with the headache of dealing with banking procedures and bureaucracy in order to finalise the sale of our apartment, as well as sort out the place we wanted to buy and it was the second one that would prove the most frustrating, but that’s a story for next time. Stay tuned for the story, whenever it is eventually finalised, that coincided directly with this one; The Hell That We Experienced In The Real Estate Process In Singapore — Buying.

Boy, that was nine months of fun Note: This post was written over the course of many months, beginning on Friday, May 3, 2019.

#agents #apartments #buying #hdb #property #real estate

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