Plainfoot Realty · Tarrow Fold

Every listing in square feet, not vibes.

14 Larkin Row · 1,640 sq ft · Measured twice

Our sign. The rider carries the square footage, which is the one thing most signs leave off.

Plainfoot describes houses the way a surveyor would: the number, the age, the thing you would want to know before you drive over.

Book a showing List your house

Last Sunday we went to an open house.

Not one of ours. Warm cookies on the island, a card that said help yourself. Three bedrooms, the listing said. One 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 and not the basement.

The plate. Seven cookies, one card, one dehumidifier.

Eight listing words, translated

Most buyers crack the code by their third weekend. Here it is on your first.

The listing says	What it means
Cozy	Small. We print the room sizes.
Charming	Old. We print the age of the roof, the wiring and the furnace.
Up-and-coming	Not there yet. We print what opened on the main street, and what closed.
Motivated seller	Will take less than asking. We never write it; the seller is our client. We print days on market instead.
Needs TLC	Needs money. We print the quote.
Close to transit	You will hear the train. We print the time of the first one.
Great bones	What you cannot see is sound; what you can see is not. We say which.
Natural light	Has windows. We print which way they face.

Also on the back of our business cards, which is why they are the size of a postcard.

The same house, written twice

The seller of 14 Larkin Row moved it to us in March. Same house, same facts. Only one version admits it.

As listed, 202561 days, no offers

Charming 3BR, 1.5BA in up-and-coming Tarrow Fold! Cozy living room with great bones and tons of natural light. Updated kitchen. Needs a little TLC. Close to transit, shops and dining. Covered porch for your morning coffee. Motivated seller! Won't last!

As listed by Plainfoot, 202619 days, under contract

Built 1948. 1,640 sq ft, 90 of them porch. Rooms as drawn.
Kitchen 2004, appliances 2019.
Roof 1998. Quote to replace: $11,400, Walsh & Sons Roofing.
Furnace 2015. Water heater 2021.
Station nine minutes on foot. The 6:10 inbound passes the back fence.
Ostler Street, two years: bakery, hardware store, dentist opened. Video rental closed.
Reduced once, $412,000 to $389,000.

We are not claiming the second card is why it sold. We are pointing out that it is the one that did.

The fee is 2 percent.

Paid at closing. Nothing before it, after it or instead of it.

You may have been quoted more. The usual reason is marketing. Most of what is called marketing is adjectives, and adjectives are free.

Buying? Our fee comes from the seller's side, and it is on page one of the agreement. Most put it on the last page.

Read the agreement before you sign it

The only number on this page we did not have to measure.

What we tell you at a showing that the listing will not

A listing is a legal document with adjectives. A showing is a conversation.

Showing sheet14 Larkin Row · Saturday 10:00

The neighbour to the east has a beagle, Franklin. He barks at the mail, around eleven, and at nothing else.
Water heater 2021. The one before lasted eleven years. The seller kept both receipts.
The 6:10 inbound is the loud one. You stop hearing the rest in a month, the seller says.
Heavy rain puts a coffee mug of water in the basement's northwest corner. The seller keeps a towel there. It conveys.
The living room gets its sun from one o'clock. If the showing is at ten, we will wait.
The kitchen tap takes forty seconds to run hot. We timed it.

You get a copy at the door. The seller wrote item four.

We would rather you learned it while you could still walk away.

Buyers who walk away from one house tend to buy another. We would like it to be one of ours.

Book a showing at 14 Larkin Row

Tarrow Fold, in five lines

Tarrow Fold · Inbound

6:10The loud one
6:30Quieter
6:50You stop noticing
7:1034 minutes to the city

Every 20 minutes before nine, every 40 after.

40 Ostler St

Vacant since 2023. We do not know what is going in. Neither does anyone who says they do.

7 min

Walk to the elementary school. Enrolment rose by 40 last year, hence the portable classrooms on the field.

$5,100

A year in property tax at $389,000. Reassessed every three years, next in 2027.

It rains.

Larkin Row's storm drains are fine. Tanyard Lane's are not, and we will say so when we show you Tanyard Lane.

Four questions, answered the way we would in the car

Don't adjectives help a house sell?: They get a listing clicked. A click is not a sale. The buyer who finds 1948 wiring behind charming is annoyed with us.
What if my house really is charming?: Then the photographs will say so and we will not have to. Nobody has bought a house because of the paragraph.
Will you ever write motivated seller?: No. If a seller will take less, we lower the price. That is what the price is for.
Why Plainfoot?: Plain footage. Every sign prints the square feet, so you know what you are driving over to see.

Book a showing. We will bring the tape measure.

We do not bring cookies.

Showings run forty minutes. 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.

Book a showing List your house with Plainfoot

Our tape. Sixteen feet is the long side of the living room.