In January 2016 I shared a story on YouTube about our 1963 Preway fireplace and compared it to buying a house. To date, that has been the most viewed video on my YouTube channel.
I just watched it again and realized that I left out a very personal detail that I think is worth sharing. I’ll add it to the end of this blog.
The video is embedded below.
Here is the content of the video.
"What do you do when you find a house that you really want, and you don’t want to lose it?
Well I can tell what I did with this 1963 Preway fireplace. If you don’t know what that is, it’s like an upside-down metal funnel of a fire place that is somewhat portable. You can put it in different parts of your house and pipe it into your ceiling and out your roof.
My wife and I wanted one of those in the worst way. She had been spending a lot of time on eBay looking around. Most of them were pretty used. After all, it is a 50 year old fireplace. So she finds this one in Colorado on eBay that stated it was brand new in its original crate – never used. It was pretty pricy, but it was a one of a kind. There were other Preway fire places, but none that had never had a fire burned in them. Hundreds of people were watching it on eBay, but no one had bid. There were several days left and they were probably all waiting until the end to bid to try to get it as cheap as possible. Katrina and I wanted that fireplace. We did not want to lose that fireplace. I looked at my wife and said… “it’s what we want – it fits our needs – are you really thinking that you are going to find another one like this? “ Of course the answer was… we need to get this. We did a buy-it-now and everyone else lost their opportunity because they hesitated.
What do you do when you find a house that you really, really want and you don’t want to lose it? Don’t hesitate!"
What I left out of that video was that my dad had just passed away and left us a small inheritance. We wanted to purchase something with the money that would always remind us of him. That was in 2012. My dad’s final present to us has been in our home or office ever since. Someday it will become our kid’s fireplace. They will either have a piece of Grandpa in their home or a rare item to put back on eBay.
On behalf of Steve Martin Homes Group,
-Steve
Steve Martin Smith is a top Sarasota County area Real Estate Agent licensed in the state of Florida since January of 2015. With an impressive launch, he attained the number two ranking in his first brokerage of 20 agents by the end of 2016. That caused other brokerages to aggressively attempt to recruit him and eventually he accepted an offer with Coldwell Banker Residential Real Estate in March of 2017. Since that time Steve Martin has reached many personal heights. Selling $1,000,000+ estates from Panther Ridge in Manatee County to condos in Punta Gorda, Steve has managed to become one of the top selling agents of single family homes in our local Sarasota County market. The growth and success that Steve Martin Homes Group has attained in 2019 paved the way to accept an offer with RE/MAX Platinum Realty. This move to better serve their customers, with offices across Sarasota County, Manatee County and the largest global presence of any real estate brand, is certain to build on a history of pleasing buyers and sellers who choose to trust Steve Martin Homes Group with all of their residential real estate needs.