Talk to Scott Lash and he’ll listen. Then, he might find a way to tell you about the layers of Waldoboro’s history, and the five-masted schooners that were built here, the craftsmen that made them, and all the businesses that spun from shipbuilding. He might say he sees Waldoboro as a town defined by its individuals versus by any one business or institution. He very likely might add that Waldoboro is a not a diamond in the rough. It’s a diamond. He won’t mention how he started the first emergency medical response service on campus when he was at the University of Maine Farmington. Nor will he say that he used to serve as a critical care paramedic for Waldoboro. Nor how he chaired the School Board of RSU40 and co-chaired the campaign to build the new library. Instead, if you’re lucky, he’ll describe how he loved riding with his grandmother Janice Soucy, a realtor herself, to look at houses; watching his father take the pictures of them, developing the film and making prints that would then be published; and marveling at the latest machines in his grandmother’s office such as her IBM mainframe, her Xerox, and her mobile radio she used for staying in touch with clients and ordering pizza for her grandson. Most of all, Scott will credit her for encouraging his own passion for real estate and all its aspects. Scott started selling houses right after graduation. In 2008 he hung out his own shingle. The Lash Realty Group works properties as big as million-dollar mansions to those as small as a tiny wedge of land, and with the same care. And like his grandmother, he’s innovating, with virtual visits and tours without abandoning traditional meetups with clients. As Scott sees it, he’s carrying on a family tradition of helping people through one of the most important decisions in their lives.
I started this agency right when the housing bubble burst, and there were lots of problems. People were having a hard time buying. They were having a hard time selling. It probably wasn’t the best time to open an agency, but that is how I learned that buying or selling is a lot more than about the transaction.
These days aren’t easy either. People are going through something that is very stressful. It’s a lot of money, buying or selling. If you’re buying now, there’s not a lot of housing stock. If you’re selling, it might be a house you’re very attached to. Or where you raised your family for 30 years and now it’s time to let that go. Or you have to move because your job means you are relocating. Or you are trying to sell before your home is foreclosed. Or maybe you’re in the process of a divorce where selling is the least of the dynamic. No matter what, for a seller, it’s part of letting go of the past.
My job is to do my best in making the process as smooth as I can, while knowing that it is not necessarily a smooth process. There are so many moving parts that I have absolutely no control over. All I can do is fix or manage what comes up. And be ready to help the person.
I love the connection of houses with history. If you look inside some of the houses in town, you’ll see detailed trim-work in the kind of craftsmanship that doesn’t exist in rural areas. Were the tradespeople from the ship building industry involved in making this molding in their downtime? The ships don’t exist. The shipyards are long gone. But this trim-work? It’s still here.
To me, the greenest building is the one that is already standing. I just keep thinking about all the resources that are being wasted by tearing down a grand building that will probably never be that way again. That’s not to say that new construction is bad. But what makes me happiest is seeing houses being saved by someone who puts their labor of love in there and brings it back to where it could be. Or who puts their own spin on it.
I used to love selling to first-time homebuyers and watching their excitement about a new start. But it’s gotten bigger than that. It’s watching people get really excited about their vision for a property, whether it’s land or a house. It’s just watching people become passionate about that phase of their life.
To me, houses have a kind of personality. They each have their own vibe, their own feel, even ones that have had a foreclosure. Some are just abandoned with all the stuff inside and trash and debris. And you think, “Wow, that must have been a really difficult time, understandably.” Others are totally cleared out, nice and neat and clean, and you think, “It just didn’t work out, everyone went their separate way, they foreclosed, and they went on.” Some leave angry, and they might damage it. Some, you could see that they tried. They might have bought a fixer-upper and have just gotten in over their heads and needed to step away.
We did a walk-through a couple of weeks ago of a house I’d always felt was a little cold. This time, because it was for a closing, and it was as it was supposed to be, broom-swept and free of personal items. It was the first time I’d seen the house empty.
And for some reason it really hit me, how, being emptied, the house had changed its personality. It wasn’t cold anymore, it wasn’t sad. Wow, it seemed like a different person. It’s good in a foreclosure when someone can change that and bring a house back up. I really like that.
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