netjeff.com Humor collection Nightmares on Main Street

by Elizabeth Rhodes 
Seattle Times staff reporter 

31 Oct 1999

http://www.seattletimes.com/news/lifestyles/html98/horr_19991031.html


In a year that's seen home sales rockin', one might imagine that
about all a good real estate agent has to do is plunge a for-sale
sign into the front lawn, then truck buckets of commission income
to the bank.

If so, consider the case of one here-unnamed agent whose
on-the-job injury became painfully infected. Filing a Worker's
Compensation claim, she had to divulge whether another party was
involved.

Certainly was. While touring a house for sale, she was attacked.

By an angry deer fly.

"Clients think our jobs are so easy," this agent sighs. "The
truth of the matter is, we're like general managers because for
every real estate transaction there are an average of 27 people
involved - buyers, sellers, other agents, bankers, inspectors,
etc. - and we're in charge of making sure everyone does what
they're supposed to."

But with such a large band playing, sour notes are guaranteed to
happen. And when they do, the agent says it really helps to have
a good sense of humor.

In fact, over the years she's heard so many funny, poignant, sad
or simply unbelievable real estate tales that "we could have a
weekly sitcom and it would outdo anything on television."

For proof, consider the stories here, presented as a Halloween
treat. They fall into just about every category of misfortune
imaginable, beginning with house of horrors.

To protect the innocent and the guilty, the names of the numerous
King County real estate pros who provided these tales have been
mercifully withheld.

Just in time for Halloween, here's the winner in the "house of
horrors" category. It concerns a charming but trashed home in one
of Seattle's better neighborhoods.

The sellers were eccentrics who hadn't thrown away anything in
years, plus they had unusual taste in pets: hybrid wolf-dogs who
urinated freely throughout the house. "But the capper was the
second floor," recalls an agent who arrived with his buyers, a
couple of well-dressed downtown professionals, she wearing a nice
dress and pumps.

"As we went upstairs, the smell increased and increased. On the
second floor were three rooms; two were bedrooms and the third
looked empty except for hay and burlap on the floor. It was the
first room that wasn't completely filled with junk so we stepped
in and started to walk around. I looked down and the floor was
moving under the burlap. I jumped! My first inclination was it
was rats. Turned out it wasn't. It was three ferrets."

Said weasel creatures were using the entire room as a toilet -
and also making serious efforts to chew their way out. "Ever
since then I've never gone near a ferret."

You're wondering if this house ever sold? Guess what. Because "it
was a really great Craftsman, and cheap, it had multiple offers
even with the ferrets running loose and the wolf-dogs peeing
everywhere," the agent shudders.

And who made the winning bid? His clients.

In "the neighbors are not impressed" category comes this one:

Our hapless agent arrives at a newly listed house and follows the
herd of agents in the door for a broker's open-house preview. As
is commonly done on preview days, the listing agent has put out a
nice lunch spread, so the agent helps himself to a plate of food
and tours the house, checking out rooms, opening closet doors and
munching as he goes. Arriving back at the buffet, he finds
himself in the usual gathering of agents. Except he doesn't
recognize a soul. He's starting to get that disquieting
out-of-place feeling, when the person next to him asks the killer
question: How do you know the deceased? Turns out he's at an
after-funeral buffet, surrounded by the bereaved. The house for
sale is next door.

Another tale from the 'hood, this one provided by an agent whose
out-of-town buyer insists on driving because he says he needs to
learn his way around.

"While house hunting we jump back in the car to go to the next
possibility and back over the neighbors' prized maple tree,
gouging permanent-looking tire tracks in their newly seeded lawn.
By the time my clients and I realize we are dragging something
from the undercarriage, and the next-door neighbor is frantically
waving at us from her yard, I can only ask the buyers, `How
interested were you in living in this home?' "

A third neighborhood drama: "There was the great first open house
on a jewel of a new listing," recounts one agent, "when all the
neighbors stopped by to say, 'Do you know about the drug bust?'
So that was added to the Form 17 (disclosure statement)."

And finally one last attempt at impressing the neighborhood:

This agent is working hard for his clients, showing them many
homes. One day they call and say they've driven by a house that
looks like a possibility. They give him the home's particulars
and he calls the owners, leaving a message that he'll be showing
their home that afternoon.

"At the scheduled time we find the owner mowing his lawn," the
agent recalls. "I approach him and explain I'm there to show my
clients his house. His response: 'Go ahead on in, the door is
open.' We look around and conclude it's not going to work for my
clients. Upon exiting, I go to the owner again, thank him for
letting us view his home and explain that we won't be making an
offer. His response? 'That's OK, I didn't know it was listed!'
We'd been looking at the wrong house all along."

Or, if you can't win over the neighborhood, how about the
sellers:

Our dutiful agent calls the sellers and leaves word he'll be
bringing buyers by during the day. At the appointed hour, they
arrive, ring the bell, and getting no answer, unlock the front
door. Silence. Eventually the trio make their way to the master
bedroom. The door is closed, so the agent knocks. Again, no
answer. He opens it, and there are the owners busily
"exercising." To salve the embarrassment, the agent quickly sends
the owner and his wife flowers. Soon follows a phone call from
the wife. She's puzzled. Why the bouquet, she asks the agent.
Because of what happened when we dropped in on you earlier today,
he tells her.

"But I wasn't home earlier today."

All he can think to blurt is, "I think you should talk to your
husband."

File this vignette under "itchy situations:"

It's a hot summer day and eight agents, men and women, pile into
two cars to go "previewing" newly listed properties. One stop is
a sad looking former rental that's been locked up for ages. They
assume it's uninhabited. Wrong-o. "We came out and we were all
flea-infested . . . we each had literally hundreds of fleas on
us," an agent recalls. Hopping and scratching, the women
immediately shimmy out of their pantyhose while the men jump out
of their trousers. And there, beside one of Seattle's busiest
streets, can be seen eight partly naked agents doing the bug
dance and shaking their clothes at passersby. Luckily they manage
to beat a hasty retreat before the federales arrive. As for their
cars, they have to be fumigated.

In the "how to wow the seller" category, we offer these:

As our agent arrives at an attractive, newly for-sale house, she
notices a dog on the front porch patiently waiting to be let in.
The owner isn't home, but being the dog lover she is, this agent
ushers Fido inside - and thinks nothing of it until later, when
the homeowner calls. She's howling mad. That male mutt on the
porch isn't her dog, she informs the startled agent. But the
prized female show dog inside - the one in heat - certainly is,
and now the two are a couple.

A group of agents are eager to tour a very expensive "view" home.
Some view! After alerting the owner, they arrive, ring the bell
and when no one answers, let themselves in. The house is totally
silent until they get to the master bath. "This man climbs out of
the shower buck naked and starts screaming at us," remembers one
agent. "We all ran for the stairs and grabbed our business cards
(which they'd left near the front door) so he wouldn't know who'd
been there."

Her take on the situation: "I don't know why he had to get so
upset about it. It was mostly women."

And let's not overlook opportunities to impress one's coworkers:

This agent decides a noon getaway with his "special friend" is in
order. But where? Why not a vacant house for sale. The price is
certainly right. So the couple, both agents, enter. They get
comfortable . . . very comfortable . . . when who should walk in
but a bunch of agents. Even better, they recognize the twosome.
After some gasping and stumbling, "everybody was trying to make
up stories about what they were doing," says an agent. "The one I
remember is, 'My blouse got soaked in the rain and I had to take
it off and dry it.'

"This agent was really into looking her best," our spy observes.

Then there's a whole category of "buyers and sellers from hell":

The rookie agent is so excited. He has a new client, an all-cash
buyer, but it's even better than that. This client is also an
investor who wants to purchase lots of properties. So the agent
spends considerable time helping him wheel and deal, putting down
earnest money on eight houses. Simultaneously. Such a payday it's
going to be! But there's just one problem . . . OK, two problems.
The buyer is seriously nuts. And he has no money. None. "We had
to call the police to get him out of our office," the agent
recounts.

And this one, from an agent . . . 

"How about the seller who waited at escrow to get the check,
bought a new SUV and took off for Las Vegas - leaving behind 25
years worth of furniture, dried flowers, Christmas decorations
and old paint for the new buyers to deal with. They, of course,
just called their agent, and it was a happy ending for all.
Except the agent."

In this tale, we again have a new agent. She's representing the
seller. A buyer is found, and the deal must be inked quickly
because said buyer is leaving town. So the agent calls the seller
and finds him more potted than a philodendron.

"Are you in any shape to be signing the sales papers?" she asks.
"Sure, come on over," he replies. So she does, the buyer's agent
in tow. Indeed, the seller signs, and for an extra bonus hurls
drunken insults at both agents, peppering his own with
particularly offensive sexual slurs. Next day, when he sobers up,
guess what. He doesn't want to sell and the deal falls apart.
"Had enough of you," his agent counters, refusing to do any more
business with him.

Two years go by. Imagine who's on the phone to the same agent:
the same delightful seller. "He tells me he really needs to sell
his house, so like a dummy I go over," she confesses. But when
she gets there she finds housing is not on his mind. Instead he
tells her he thinks he may have killed someone. Or more
specifically, "I think I may have killed you." Being the
all-purpose agent, she discerns he's getting counseling, and
exiting, calls his counselor to report the guy thinks he's a
murderer.

Two days later, from a mental ward, our seller calls the agent.
Wants to thank her. Moreover, "I've figured out what my problem
is," he says. She falls for it. What's your problem? "It's you.
I'm in love with you."

Now older and wiser, this agent says, "I always talk to young
agents about safety issues . . . "

Maybe that seller should meet this buyer:

In her early 30s, she's just arrived from the South, she tells
the agent, to start a new life for herself and her unborn baby.
And a good life it will be, too. Because she's a member of a
prominent family and set to inherit many millions, nothing will
do but a $1.4 million manse. With a flourish of her
well-manicured hand she writes a check for a $100,000
earnest-money deposit . . . the balance, she grandly tells the
agent, will be cash. No mere mortgage for her. The agent just has
to wait for verification from her bank.

He waits. The $100,000 check bounces once; it bounces twice. But
major heiress is nowhere to be found. Maybe that's because while
buying the house she also uses the same bank account to purchase
a new Mercedes.

Surprisingly, that isn't the end of our heiress. After some time
she calls the agent - to threaten him if he ever mentions her to
anyone else.

In this vignette, an agent teams up with a well-educated
professional couple who want to buy a house but claim to have
little money, a detail not easily verifiable because they have
neither a bank account nor credit cards . . . in fact they've
never had credit cards. They also want to purchase a house
without getting a mortgage because they don't believe in
mortgages. So for months the agent works with them, searching for
an acceptable house with seller financing and tearing her hair
out. Finally they find a home they love. And what do they do?
Produce $850,000. In cash. Are they drug dealers, their agent
wonders? No. Just different.

And under the heading "how an agent gets into hot water," try
this one:

Our agent, a man, had a listing for a very exclusive condominium.
One evening someone comes to see it. What does he find but this
agent - and the owner - frolicking naked in the condo's large
whirlpool tub. What was going on? "Just showing the unit," the
agent offers. He was disciplined over that one. . . . 

And finally, in the "how agents learn valuable lessons" category,
there's a final entry:

Sometimes agents aren't certain a house is lived in. Maybe it is
. . . maybe there's just some furniture there to make it appear
occupied. The tip-off that someone's in residence is food. This
particular agent and his partner are at one such house, a
run-down fixer, and can't agree on the occupancy issue. As they
debate, the first agent, "being my usual detective self," says
"let's look in the refrigerator." It's one of those voila moments
as he boldly swings open the door to face - yes, face - blobs of
rotting food fairly pulsating with thousands of small black
flies. Taken aback by the "horrific" sight and stench, he gasps -
just as the suddenly liberated flies take flight and are sucked
into his mouth.

"I've never opened a refrigerator door the same way again," he
says ruefully. "I'll open it from the side and peek." 

netjeff.com Humor collection Nightmares on Main Street