Selling a house can be difficult, but not selling your home is easy.  Let me share my experience from yesterday.  (It's a tad long, but worth the read!) The median home price in Gig Harbor is about $365k, so when I saw a 2750sf newer home in a great neighborhood come on the market for $280k, I called some of my buyers right away.  Sure enough, one of my clients wanted to see the home immediately.  Here's where the story begins...

I looked at the showing information and saw "Appt. only, no MLS keybox."  Fair enough, I called the phone number that was listed and got a basic, "Hello?" 

"Good morning, this is Matt Thomson from Keller Williams Realty, is this Mr. Popenko?" (fake name)

"Who?"

"Mr. Popenko?"

"No one here by that name."

So I applogized for dialing the wrong number, hung up and tried the phone to show number again, taking great care to dial it correctly.  It was the same guy, "Hello?"

"Uh, sorry to bother you again, this is Matt Thomson with Keller Williams Realty.  I'm trying to set an appointment to show the Popenko's home on 71st and this is the number I was given to call."

"Yeah, this is Randy, I'm the listing agent."  (Uh, information that would have been helpful the first time I called).

I tried to set an appointment for the following day at 2pm, and was told that "The sellers agreed not to go anywhere from 1pm-9pm, so just show up any time in that slot."  Really? No appointment, just show up?  Yep.  Oh boy.

So the next day (yesterday) I show up at the house just before 2pm.  My clients were going to meet me at the house after mom picked up the kids (aged 7 and 4) and dad was leaving work early.  About 2:04 my client calls just to make sure we're still on.  Sure enough, I tell him, I'm already at the house. 

"We're at the house, where are you?"  Oh boy.  Turns out my buyers were just around the corner, sitting in front of a very similar looking home...the one that actually had a "For Sale" sign in front.  They should have checked the address more carefully, I should have informed them the house we wanted to see wouldn't have a "For Sale" sign up.  No harm done.

Then it got really ineresting.  I went up and rang the doorbell, and an elderly lady answered while speaking on the phone in a language I didn't recognize.  She waved us in and retreated to the kitchen.  As we entered, we were impressed with how clean and well kept the home was.  Whatever was cooking in the kitchen made the whole house smell great, too.  Then things went downhill quickly.  We walked around the corner into the kitchen/great room.  Old lady #1 was still on the phone, old lady #2 was at the stove cooking something that smelled great but looked awful, and it was splattering grease everywhere, old lady #3 was at the table eating a plate of what old lady #2 was cooking, and old lady #4 was on the couch watching what appeared to be '70's porn on a big screen TV.

Fortunately the 4 year old boy was too taken by the different language he was hearing, so he never took his eyes off of the lady on the phone.  Not so fortunately the 7 year old girl's attention was grabbed by the strange noises she heard on the TV and she was the first to see what was on.  Dad quickly snatched her up and dashed out of the room, while mom cleverly covered the 4-year old's eyes and was right on dad's heels.  Sister had seen enough to be curious, and asked all sorts of questions that made the 4-year old wonder what he had missed.  We decided to continue upstairs, 'cause this house was a screaming deal after all.  Just my luck, every single door upstairs was closed.  As the professional, it fell on me to check each room for kid safety prior to entering.  Luckily, there was nothing too exciting. 

We wanted to see the back yard, so it again fell on me to walk back through the room of elderly ladies (still watching porn), into the back yard, and around to open the gate for my clients who snuck out the front and walked around.  I got to walk back through again to close up, and none of the ladies had moved much, and the porn on TV was still going. 

Back out front, although a little shaken, my buyers thought they may still be interested in pursuing this house.  After all, it was more than $120k less than the other 2 for sale in the neighborhood.  So I called Randy and asked him when I could present an offer to him.  "I don't want any offers, fax it to the number in the agent only remarks." 

"I saw that number, but I prefer to present my offers in person.  Is there a time I can meet you?"

"I don't want to see any offers.  That fax # is for the attorney who's handling this.  Fax it to him."

"Oh, okay.  Do you know if any other offers are coming in?"

"I don't know anything."  (I was coming to that conclusion all on my own).  "All I know is the lawyer is collecting the offers til he has enough and then he'll present them to the bank."

That didn't sound right to me, so I said, "I thought you were legally obligated to present all offers directly to the seller in a timely manner.  Why would this attorney gather offers then present them directly to the bank if it's not bank owned?"

"I don't know.  I'm just doing what the lawyer told me to do." 

Splendid.  So I passed this info on to my buyers, but during the course of my conversation with Randy they had decided they didn't like the whole vibe of this house.  They'd rather look at the one around the corner where they originally parked, despite it being $120k more expensive.  So look we did, and assuming we can get the price down a little bit, we should have them in a new home in just over a month!

So you see, selling a home can be tough (remember, we never even planned to look at the home on which we made the offer, it was out of their target price range), but not selling your home is easy.  Simply don't put up a "For Sale" sign, don't allow for appointments, hire an agent who "doesn't know anything," make sure any offers aren't presented, and if you're really not wanting to sell, just toss some porn on the big screen for when the kiddos come by.  It's just not that tough!