Siobhan Curious's Profile

It is definitely a skill that can be learned. I have found it to be similar to cooking. I learned to cook, and cook well, in my twenties, because I was suddenly very, very interested in it. For this reason, I had the drive and, most importantly, the patience, to read a lot, experiment, learn from my failures. Now that I'm learning to garden, I am finding the requirements are exactly the same: you need to love doing it so much that investing the time to learn is a joy. I am never happier than when I'm puttering around my kitchen, or on the couch with the gardening book, or trolling through the produce in the grocery store, or watering my seedlings. I'm therefore learning what I need to learn in order to be a good cook and a good gardener.

I made this soup last night, So good! It was for just two of us, so I simmered only half the dumplings and baked the rest in a muffin tin as little biscuits, which I ate w/ leftover soup for lunch - super tasty. I posted a photo here: http://whenshesathome.tumblr.com/post/34128271144/roasted-veggie-soup-w-herbed-dumplings-courtesy

Interesting. We just bought a house and went w/ an agent recommended by several friends. We did not interview anyone else. We soon discovered that her high-octane personality was a real challenge, and spending time w/ her was exhausting, as my husband and I are both introverts who get worn out by exuberance and pushiness. She also didn't get us on a personal level and was constantly surprised by our tastes and requirements. We came home from every outing on edge and upset, and we thought several times of kicking her to the curb.

HOWEVER, we ran into very serious problems with an offer we made, and she was a godsend. She handled everything beautifully and got us out of what could have been a really terrible situation and a property that would have been all wrong for us. We couldn't have done it without her. In the meantime, we dealt w/ listing agent after listing agent who was dishonest, lazy and/or uninformed. By the time we began round 2 of the househunt, we were ready to nominate her for sainthood.

All this to say: it's unlikely you'll find a perfect agent. In the end, we realized that her most important quality was her dedication to and pride in her work. She really, really wanted to find us a good home, and to recommend her to our friends. That's why so many people recommended her to us, and we're glad they did.

My husband and I just narrowly dodged a bullet; we had made an offer on a condo and then discovered that the downstairs neighbour is an extremely unpleasant person. Our disappointment over ditching the condo is far outweighed by our relief that we won't be living upstairs from her. I wrote a blog post about it, which you can find here:

http://siobhancurious.com/2012/03/12/bad-teacher/

I would take warnings from neighbours seriously, and take steps that commenters above have suggested: other neighbours, police info etc. The stress of a bad neighbour is not something that we can always foresee and avoid; you've been given a gift.