Charming 3BR, 1.5BA in up-and-coming Tarrow Fold! Cozy living room with great bones and tons of natural light. Updated kitchen with newer appliances. Needs a little TLC to make it your own. Close to transit, shops and dining, with a cute covered porch for your morning coffee. Motivated seller! This one won't last!
Tollgate Realty · Tarrow Fold
Every listing in square feet, not vibes.
14 Larkin Row · 1,640 sq ft · Measured twice
Last Sunday we went to an open house.
Not one of ours. There was a plate of warm cookies on the kitchen island and a card that said help yourself, so we did. The listing said three bedrooms, and it was right if you count the one that fits a twin bed and a person standing sideways. A dehumidifier was running in the basement. The cookies were excellent. They were there so you would smell cookies instead of the basement.
That is the whole industry in one kitchen. The house was fine. The description was the problem. Tollgate describes houses the way a surveyor would: the number, the age, the thing you would want to know before you drive over. It starts with eight words we do not use.
Eight listing words, translated
Every trade has a code. Most buyers crack this one by their third weekend of open houses. Here it is on your first.
| The listing says | What it means |
|---|---|
| Cozy | Small. We print the dimensions of every room so you can decide how small. |
| Charming | Old, and we like it. We also print the age of the roof, the wiring and the furnace, because we checked. |
| Up-and-coming | Not there yet. We tell you what opened on the main street in the last two years and what closed. |
| Motivated seller | Will take less than asking. We never write it: the seller is our client. We print the days on market, which says the same thing. |
| Needs TLC | Needs money. We print the amount a contractor quoted and the contractor's trade. |
| Close to transit | You will hear the train. We print the time of the first one. |
| Great bones | The parts you cannot see are sound and the parts you can see are not. We list which is which. |
| Natural light | Has windows. We print which way they face and which rooms get the afternoon. |
The same house, written twice
The seller of 14 Larkin Row moved it to us in March. Here is the house both ways. The facts are identical. Only one version admits it.
14 Larkin Row, Tarrow Fold. Built 1948. 1,640 square feet, 90 of them a covered porch facing the street. Three bedrooms: 12 by 14, 11 by 12 and 9 by 10. One full bath upstairs, one half bath off the kitchen. Living room 13 by 16, windows face south. Kitchen cabinets and counters from 2004, appliances from 2019. Roof from 1998, quoted at $11,400 to replace by Pell & Sons Roofing. Furnace 2015. Water heater 2021. Tarrow Fold station is a nine minute walk and the 6:10 inbound train passes the back fence. On Ostler Street in the last two years a bakery, a hardware store and a dentist opened, and a video rental shop closed. Reduced once, from $412,000 to $389,000.
See the full listing sheetThe fee is 2 percent. Here is the whole sentence.
Tollgate charges the seller 2 percent of the sale price, paid at closing, and nothing before it, after it or instead of it.
You may have been quoted more. The usual reason given for a higher fee is marketing. Most of what is called marketing is adjectives, and adjectives are free. The rest is photographs, and a photograph of a south-facing living room costs the same whether or not you call it sun-drenched.
If you are buying, our fee comes from the seller's side, as is usual, and the amount is on the first page of our agreement. Most agreements put it on the last page. We have never understood why.
Read the agreement before you sign itWhat we tell you at a showing that the listing will not
A listing is a legal document with adjectives. A showing is a conversation. Here is the one you would have in your first ten minutes at 14 Larkin Row.
Showing sheet14 Larkin Row · Saturday 10:00
- The neighbour on the north side has a beagle named Franklin. He barks at the mail, which comes around eleven, and at nothing else.
- The water heater is from 2021. The one before it lasted eleven years. The seller kept both receipts.
- The 6:10 inbound is the loud one. The seller says you stop hearing the rest within a month. She has lived here nine years.
- In a heavy rain the basement takes on water at the northwest corner, about a coffee mug's worth. The seller keeps a towel there. The towel conveys.
- The living room gets its sun from about one o'clock. If this showing is at ten, we will wait with you.
- The kitchen tap takes forty seconds to run hot. We timed it.
None of this fits in a listing. All of it is in the house, and you would learn it your first week here. We would rather you learned it while you could still walk away. Buyers who walk away from one house tend to buy another, and we would like it to be one of ours.
Book a showing at 14 Larkin RowTarrow Fold, in five lines
- The train to the city takes 34 minutes. It runs every 20 minutes before nine and every 40 after.
- The storefront at 40 Ostler Street has been vacant since 2023. We do not know what is going in. Neither does anyone who says they do.
- The elementary school is a seven minute walk. Enrolment rose by 40 last year, hence the two portable classrooms on the field.
- Property tax on a $389,000 house runs about $5,100 a year. The town reassesses every three years, next in 2027.
- It rains. The storm drains on Larkin Row are fine. The ones on Tanyard Lane are not, and we will say so when we show you Tanyard Lane.
Six questions, answered the way we would answer them in the car
- Don't adjectives help a house sell?
- They help a listing get clicked. A click is not a sale. The buyer who clicks on charming and finds 1948 wiring is annoyed with the agent, and the agent would be us.
- What if my house really is charming?
- Then the photographs will say so and we will not have to. No buyer we have met has fallen for a house because of the paragraph.
- Do you represent buyers?
- Yes. You get a showing sheet for every house we show you, ours or not. If we learn something after you have made an offer, you hear it the same day.
- Will all those facts put buyers off?
- Some. The ones who would have been put off at the inspection instead, two weeks and one appraisal fee later. We would rather lose them on day one than on day forty.
- Will you ever write motivated seller?
- No. If a seller wants it known they will take less, we lower the price. That is what the price is for.
- Why Tollgate?
- There was a tollgate at the top of Ostler Street until 1911. You paid at the gate and knew exactly what you had paid for before you went through. It seemed the right idea for a brokerage.
Book a showing. We will bring the tape measure.
Showings run forty minutes. We bring the floor plan, a tape measure and the train timetable. We do not bring cookies. If the kitchen smells like anything, we would like you to know what. If you want cookies, the bakery on Ostler Street opens at seven. Parking is on the street, and it is fine.