The spring selling season will descend upon the Nashville area in the next few weeks, and buyers are elated.

Try as they may, it seems impossible for Realtors to convince their buyers that they are actually at work scouring new listings on MLS, joining Facebook “coming soon” groups, networking, hanging out at divorce courts and funeral homes – even sending mailers to everyone living in the Munford area of town.

There are few listings, very few, not many.

Many that appear on the ever-so-accurate Trulia or Zillow sites are sold. The conversation is reminiscent of the Monty Python dead parrot sketch.

Buyer: I want to see the listing at 123 Elliston.

Realtor: Let me see here. I am sorry, but that one is sold.

Buyer: No it’s not. It’s for sale. Says so right here on Zillow.

Realtor: I know. But Zillow shows you houses that are under contract as for sale, but Realtracs allows us to know that they are sold.

Buyer: So we want to see 123 Elliston.

Realtor: But it’s sold, I tell you.

Buyer: No it’s not. Says so on Trulia as well. It is for sale, and I want to see it.

Realtor: The house is sold, gone. It has ceased to be, and it is no more! Bereft of listing life and resting in peace. Gone to the great closing table in the sky. It has joined the ranks of the pending. It can be shown no more.

Soon to be the ex-house of the current owners and an ex-listing. As a matter of fact, the buyer is a developer and it will soon be pushing up daisies and HPRs. It was unfit for human habitation. Parrots have died there.

Buyer: Does that mean you’re not going to show it to me?

And then there are combination locks. When scheduling showings, many agents print the MLS listing information sheets and hand then to the buyers. Often, the agents have written the showing instructions on the sheets.

On occasion, the showing center will email the listing instructions for entrance, and those emails are sometimes printed and handed to the buyers.

With as many as 150 or as few as 85 people moving into the area every day, many Realtors are working with buyers that they have never met. Some of them share the entrance information with their clients.

So sellers with combination locks on their doors run the risk of someone other than the Realtors gaining entrance.

And of course, there is the chance that the buyers or the agents accidentally drop the listing sheet complete with home address and complete direction to the home as well as the location and combination of the lockbox.

With builders and developers, it is understandable as they have numerous sub-contractors and tradesmen entering the houses.

In order to obtain a Sentricard, the chosen vendor of Realtracs, the person must be a Realtor or a person that can prove that he or she works within the industry such as appraisers, home inspectors, and some exterminators.

When a Sentricard is used to gain access into a home, the owner of the lockbox is notified, so that showings can be monitored as the people activating the lockbox must use cards that are assigned to them and a security code that is assigned to the card.

Sale of the Week

We have not visited the one-bedroom, 660-square-foot Icon condominiums lately.

As they approach their eighth birthdays, they have done well.

The original buyer of unit #910 sold last week for $308,000, seven and a-half years after she purchased the property for $214,400.

The ninth floor is near the club house area that includes an enormous deck facing both downtown and the Two Old Hippies part of The Gulch. Half of that deck, which is larger than most entire yards in 12South or the Village, is one of the two swimming pools in the development.

Angela Pickney O’Neil, the award-winning Realtor from the Wilson Group listed the condo, which sold in a month. Pickney noted that the home includes 400 square feet of patio space and a parking space.

In the original offering, parking spaces sold for $10,000. Some have sold for as much as $25,000 in the past years.

Mary Perreault of Real Living Sterling Properties ably represented the buyer, who received $5,000 for closing costs.

At $308,000 with 660 square feet, the price per square foot is $466.66.

In the category of rising tide raising all ships, 1212 has proven to be the ally, not the enemy, of Gulch dwellers.

Richard Courtney is a real estate broker with Christianson, Patterson, Courtney, and Associates and can be reached at [email protected].