From Texas to Terrace: How a Historic Freeze Almost Ended Their SMA Dream

7 min read

Names have been changed. Everything else is true.

In December 2019, I got an email from Tom and Katherine. They were still in Texas. They’d been thinking about San Miguel for years. And they were ready — carefully, methodically — to start looking.

We were long-distance from day one. Video calls. Long email threads. A few visits when they could get down. I showed them a handful of homes over the course of a year before they saw the one. It was in Los Frailes — a home with the kind of quiet, generous space that made you exhale when you walked in. The moment they saw it, they knew.

They wired the earnest money. Closing was set.

Then things started going wrong.

The headwind, before the storm

First, their bank made a mistake. Then another. Working long-distance across borders with an international transaction is complicated on a good day; when your bank isn’t paying attention, it becomes a series of small emergencies. I spent weeks on the phone with their U.S. bank, my Mexican counterparts, and Tom — patient calls that started with “Okay, so here’s what we need to do next…”

The pandemic added a second layer. Travel restrictions, remote closings, notarios adjusting to a new normal. We adapted. Everyone did.

But then came February 2021.

The Texas freeze

If you don’t remember it, most of Texas came to a full stop. Historic ice storm. Power outages that lasted days. Grocery store shelves emptied. Water lines burst. People died. And Tom and Katherine — like thousands of others across the state — were locked inside their house without power, without running water, without a functioning bank, and without a way to reach any office in person.

They tried to move the money over the phone. They tried to reach their bank online. Nothing worked. Everything was overwhelmed. The wire that was supposed to complete their down payment sat in limbo.

Meanwhile, in San Miguel, the sellers were watching the deadline pass.

The other couple

I should tell you: their sellers were good people. They weren’t villains. But they’d already had another buyer back out earlier in the process — so their patience had a limit. And there was another couple, chompin’ at the bit, ready to jump in the moment Tom and Katherine’s deal cracked.

I got the call from Tom on a Tuesday. His voice was calm, but not calm. He said, “We’re going to lose it, aren’t we.”

I told him I’d call him back.

Then I called the sellers.

The call

I’ve been in this business long enough to know that most of what we do isn’t legal or financial. It’s translation. My job that afternoon wasn’t to hustle. It was to explain — carefully, in Spanish, over a landline that kept crackling — that the couple who wanted their home was not a couple that would disappear. They were, at that exact moment, trapped in their own house because their entire state was frozen shut. They were the last people on Earth who would ghost.

I told them everything I knew about Tom and Katherine. How careful they’d been. How much they’d asked. How long they’d been thinking about San Miguel before we ever met. I told them the wire would come. I told them I would personally follow it every day until it did.

I asked for more time.

I did not promise. I asked.

The sellers said yes.

What happened next

Tom and Katherine’s power came back the following Sunday. The wire cleared on the Monday after. They closed the following week.

And here’s the twist that still makes me smile: the other couple — the one that was ready to swoop in — ended up buying in Los Frailes too. Tom and Katherine and that couple are neighbors now. They’ve had drinks together. They talk about the strange grace of how it all worked out.

Six months after closing, Tom and Katherine referred me to friends. Two years later, they bought a second home from me. Now we’re working on their third.

What that week taught me

A few things.

The deal is never the deal. It’s a story between two families. When someone remembers you as the person who helped them across a specific bridge on a specific bad day, you’re not their agent anymore. You’re something else. That relationship pays for itself for the rest of your career, but that’s not why you do it.

Sellers, when treated as full people, respond as full people. The couple who owned that home wasn’t looking to punish Tom and Katherine. They were looking for certainty. If you can give them certainty — not with pressure, but with honest information — they will almost always give you time.

The Texas freeze was never the whole story. It was the last of three headwinds — bank mistakes, pandemic disruption, and then a historic weather event. Tom wrote later, in a letter I still have: “That is the true test for an agent when things out of their control go wrong. Nearly any agent can put together a deal when all the pieces fall into place.” That sentence stuck with me. It still does.

Where they are now

Tom and Katherine live in San Miguel. We’re on our third transaction together. The lot next to them belongs to the couple that almost got their house — and every time I visit, someone reminds someone else about the winter of 2021.

I don’t quit on people. That’s the shortest way I know to say what I do for a living.

If you’re considering San Miguel — as a first buyer, a returning buyer, a curious traveler — reach out. The paperwork is the smallest part of it.

— Carolina