August 22nd, 2016

       I got a call from a, shall we say, an “ethnic” man. We get these calls often as folks who grew up in other cultures are often successful here and may feel that a measure of their success is farm ownership, as that may have counted for a lot from where they originally came. Caller ID showed it was from someone with a NYC area code.

o      The first thing this man asked me was, “Did I speak Chinese?” Though heavily accented, I understood him easily enough. No, I didn’t. That out of the way,  he then started in on the taxes, wanting me to lower them. I am not sure if I ever made him understand that I had no power to control taxes of anyone else’s property – and probably not my own either. No agent does.
       Then, not happy with my lack of Chinese, he gave me over to his grand daughter to provide translation services. She spoke good English and tried very hard, but he was jabbering away like crazy in the background and would never give her a chance to ask me the question he wanted answered before he was on her with another question. This went on for a while and she sure struggled trying to converse with both of us at once. very frustrating for all three of us no doubt.
       He had responded to a large ad placed in a New York City paper. It was for a farm with a large and very good home, a tenant house, a large barn and many outbuildings, mostly like new. And with 40+ acres, it is considered an attractive buy for our area, one that would sound like a steal to someone from the NYC area. The ad clearly stated its town here in the Mohawk Valley.
       And then he asked me the question of all questions, was the farm in Yonkers? What, am I hearing her right? Yonkers? Where did he ever get that idea? Of course not. Disgusted with me, he abruptly hung up.
       Good grief, you can’t find 40 acres for sale in Yonkers at any price; you can’t even find 10 acres at any price. There is nothing there even remotely close to our prices here, nothing. Small homes on tiny lots there cost far more than what we were asking for the 2 homes and over 40 acres. He had to be off by millions upon millions to think he could get a buy like that in Yonkers. But hope springs eternal.