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What is the strangest or scariest thing you have found in a client's home?

I thought I had seen it all until today.....

I have found moldy food, panties, money, jewelery, illegal substances, naughty bedroom items but I have never found what I saw today.

Our team went into a client's home to destage it since it had sold. The homeowner was at work and left me the key to let myself in. After we had packed up the accessories, lamps and artwork we then got to work rolling up the area rugs. I had to move the family room sofa to get the rug out from underneath it. When I moved it I found.....

Yes a GUN!!

To be honest I was not sure it if was real or not- maybe it was a squirt gun or a BB gun? It looked real. My assistant and I decided not to pick it up and I immediately called the homeowner. He told me that he had left it there last night and FORGOT about it.

The problem was that I did not want to leave it there since the rental company was coming to get the furniture and I did not want them to A. touch it or B. take it.

The homeowner informed me that it was real and it was LOADED.

I did not realize that they were so heavy. I wanted to do a Charlie's Angels Pose but I did not want my prints on it! Definitely this was above and beyond normal decluttering and not part of my staging props.

Posted by Kate Hart on 06/29/2007 04:45 PM

Comments (85)

home staging philadelphia, home staging decluttering, home staging props, kate hart

Originally posted at: Home Staging Pennsylvania- Hart & Associates Servicing the Main Line, Philadelphia, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery Counties. : What is the strangest or scariest thing you have found in a client's home?

85 Comments on What is the strangest or scariest thing you have found in a client's home?

JUN

2007

Ahhh can I just say how FREAKY that is?! Yikes! Good thing you were deStaging. I think I would freak out if Ihad to go back there. I am all for the right to bear arms but I don't need to see it. JMO!

Kate - not something I would want to find. Can you imagine a showing with a child and having them find it? What was the homeowner thinking?

I once showed a house to a lovely young couple and their two preschool aged daughters. The sellers had straightened up, lit a couple of candles, and turned on some nice jazz music, which I thought was for the benefit of our clients. I changed my mind when I walked into the master bedroom (after the kids did, mind you) and found that they forgot to push stop on the adult film they had been watching. Thank goodness the other agent didn't call for feedback.

I would have freaked out!!! That is aweful~ I have found some weird things but never something like that! I hope you didn't touch it! Don't get your fingerprints on it; like your mother use to say- you don't know here it's been!

Kate - yikes! I wouldn't want to come upon a gun in one of my listings, not laying around like that. I have had listings where there were rifles, locked up in a case, and I've known there were locked gun closets in homes I've shown betore, too. But never any gun out like that one was......thankfully a child didn't find it.

Ann

Yeow! Reminds me of years ago in a past life, before I was a mortgage broker, I had a temporary job picking up cable boxes from people who hadn't paid their bills (hey, the job had health insurance, and we had our second baby coming.)

I got back to our warehouse and was unloading my trunk and one of these cable boxes had a syringe stuck into one of its rubber feet!

Nothing says "North Denver" (80205) like a syringe!

I showed a home where there were needles with crack or heroine on the kitchen table. The funny thing is that my client bought th at home. Before closing the seller sold the windows without replacing them for more crack

While on vacation sitting by the pool in SC with my husband and kids ( about ages 6 and 4 at the time) I saw a lizard run by. My daughter had been trying to catch one all day. I got off the chair and lunged into the bush it ran under and low- and -behold- a loaded gun sat there. My husband was a cop many moons ago and we obviously guarded it and called the police. They said a botched robbery had occurred the nite before when a homeowner walked in and they apparently ditched the gun when they ran! SO GLAD MY DAUGHTER or any other child didnt find this!

As far as seeing something in a home surprising- probably my least favorite- and it has happened more than once---an UNFLUSHED TOILET.

That is crazy. I have guns and I have children. I always keep my guns under lock and key.

" Your Mortgage Specialist"

Shaun Wren

Centric Mortgage

Hi Kate, what a surprise. Wow. I did an open house on one of my listings one time because the seller's were out of town. Apparently their nephew had a party the night before so I had to pick up a few beer bottles. No big deal...until I saw the breast implants sitting on the kitchen table. Ha! Apparently one of the party goers was considering what size they wanted to be. :)

But a gun! That's something.

Yikes! That would have made me run screaming from the room. People are just so brain dead. The two most disgusting things I found in a home were, in order of disgust, used condoms under the bed, and a big pile of dog poop in a spare bedroom.

Terry Haugen - STAGE it RIGHT!

Wow, what a find. It is amazing what you can find. It sure makes life interesting!!

unbelievable. It is a good thing no one got hurt./

Last year, at one of my first open houses I was trying to look around and familiarize myself to the home before people started arriving. What a surprise when I opened the master closet to see a gun right out on the shelf in the open. What scared me more is what if I hadn't looked in this closet and had people come through and find it? People do not think.

I have a question: Why was a loaded gun hidden under the sofa? For quick access while watching tv?

Scary. Good luck.

Sugar Land, Tx
Where Life is Sweet

Kate, I'm so glad you clarified this was not one of your props. :) We did find some interesting "weeds" in a bath tub once. I guess that is not so interesting compared to others here.

Don't you just love finding little surprises? I've walked into homes (with appointments, mind you) that have had "party" paraphenalia around, magazines, a loaded pistol sitting on a closet shelf (with no safety), lingerie, hand cuffs .... I could go on and on. Someday I'll tell you about the story of doing a consultation at a house where the bathroom door was locked from the inside. (If you can't wait, you can email me).

The worst part about staging - dust, dirt and fur.

I guess I have been lucky so far, just the run of the mill nastiness you find in a teenage boys room. BTW, I have found that if you pull said teenage boy aside and explain to him that you will be moving and touching EVERYTHING in his room and placing items not used for staging on the washing machine, you usually don't find anything...

Kate - Wow, someone could have gotten shot. Lucky your team was there to prevent something from happening. A young child could have gotten a hold of the gun. Take care.

JUN

2007

WOW! I am so glad a child didn't find that and think it was a toy

Kate, did your client ever tell you why he had the loaded gun in the living room? That is one scary story. We have never come across anything like that. Betty

Thank goodness a child did not find it- I did not even consider that someone looking at the home may have a child with them. Not a very safe or welcoming statement. No explanation of why it was there- I just wanted to get my things and get OUT of there. We did take a picture because I was so shocked I did not think anyone would believe me.

Callie, I am dying to know the bathroom story. Could it be as bad as the one I saw with 13 (yes 13!) wig stands with men's toupees??? Yuck- we had to move them to the master bedroom closet. I felt like I was picking up roadkill.

Kate, That is wild. Having grown up in Texas where lots of people have and keep guns, I'm afraid I would not have thought it through as thourougly as you did. I probably would have been stupid enough to pick it up and put it in a safer place. I'm glad you made this post. Besides being intersting, it made me THINK!

Kim Dillon, Creative Eye Home Staging

Wow!! This is pretty scary!! I'm glad you didn't touch it...you don't want your fingerprints on something like that!!! Sounds like he needs to get his head out of the clouds and lock that thing up!

Kate, I just stumbled onto your fun/interesting post and had to share this. When I bought my first condo, the previous owner had left a small bowl with 2 goldfish in the refrigerator. Yes... they were still alive and became part of my family.

marti garaughty, branding and marketing tools for realtors

"Honey, have you seen the gun... I thought it was next to the remote..."

I had to stage around this:

The home owner would not remove it. Sorry about the large photo but I thought you needed it to get the full effect.

And before anyone asks .... yes, it is a boy.

Kate - In the years I have been staging, the strangest things I have encountered include an impressive marijuana garden, fully occupying the top floor of an $8M dollar home, urns of human ashes, decades of old christmas trees stored under a house - along with the skeletons of the family pets, a refrigerator full of food that had been unplugged when the owner passed away, and one VERY large rifle under a bed. Oh, but the value of diplomacy...

Maureen - I thought that was kind of obvious...(snicker)

This is hillarious and scary at the same time. I've always said that there's never a dull moment in the HR business. I guess the same can be said for staging!

I found a pair of real handcuffs in the master bath vanity. I didn't want to touch them for fear of what might be on them. Who knows where those things had been.

Dead possum under the couch.

What the heck? Do sellers really want to sell there homes or is it just a game?

Hey kate that's very scary the worst thing i have encountered in a clients home is a huge color poster of Northern California Indica !

Time to add some latex gloves to your essential items list.

I had the same story as this. I had a showing on a house i had listed that was about to go into foreclosure. the owner had a renter in the property so all showings needed to be set up with the tenants ok. I ended up being the one to call the female tenant because it was an after hours showing so the agent called me directly.

"one more thing marcus. please tell the agent showing the house my shotgun is laying out on the floor. i was scared last night so i kept it close to me"

needless to say i wanted the house to sell so i told the agent just show up a bit early so you can kick the gun under the couch.

He didn't want to show it after that! lol.

Kate, I had a similar experience last year. I was showing a city townhouse. When we got to the bedroom, there hanging over an open closet door in plain sight was a belt and holster with a 44 Magnum revolver (a very large and intimidating gun, for those not familiar with firearms).

I called the listing agent, who informed the owner, that the current tenant in the house was displaying something not helpful for either sales or safety. Ironically, the tenant had a small daughter of his own in the house as well.

The gun is scary........but what Maureen had to stage around scares me more!

Kate, I do believe you need to stop working in the 'ghetto'! I still can't get the image out of my head that one client so kindly left me with-asked to help him sort out his closet for better presentation, I came upon stacks and stacks of 'tighty-whiteys' on open racks laid out for everyone to see. He saw nothing wrong with them, either! Needless to say, he is still living there! And without a designer/stager!

Maureen, I hope you put a hat and some shorts on your boy!

Marty, two live ones in the frig are better than 5 dead in the freezer (apparently you can return them if they die too soon!)!

Oh Kate,

Of course you wanted to do a Charlie's Angels pose! This could only happen to you! So, what did you do with it (if someone else asked this I wouldn't know because I read the blog and comment - I don't read comments as a rule)?

VAL

I knocked over a bong full over water in a clients house once. Didn't really know what to say.

The worst I've had is walking through a home with a home inspector while the owner "joked" that if we found any of his weed to leave it alone. We went downstairs and opened the oven on the stove and it was full of weed. I'm not sure how many pounds but enough to make the whole city high I'm sure.

But certainly worse than that is showing a home that we thought was empty (we rang the bell and knocked for 5 minutes and shouted Hello when we entered) and while we had been there about 15 minutes an old lady comes walking down the hall in nothing but a robe which was not pulled shut. I'm afraid I won't forget and neither will those clients. And no, they did not buy the home.

I had this happen before, found a gun while hosting an open house....

Once it was the client themself. Thanks for sharing.

I had the naked people once. We showed up for a scheduled showing and the renter answers in her bathrobe with her hair wet.

"can you come back later my Boyfriend is in the shower"

My clients didn't really want to go back to see it. i think they decided they did not want to live in a house and be thinking about the love that had gone on in the shower.

I hope this seller didn't have children living with him who could have gotten hold of it. How careless could someone be with such a lethal device.

Kate...

For me the strangest has to be the panties and pot.

Large quantities of pot and panties hanging from ceiling fans, door handles, chairs etc. . .

Our Seller's apparently were using the panties as lovely home accessories. Hey. At least they were clean panties :)

I don't suppose you would want to hear the one about the dead body would you? :)

TLW...ROAR!

I went upstairs to see if one of my listings was in order to show. Walked into the teenage sons room, there was pot on the dresser, and his girlfriends soiled thong on the floor. Yuck!

Maureen, what the heck is that? Art, preserved family member. I'm surprised you didn't put raffia on it. LOL Betty

Dead Bloated Mouse in the Toilet!

Kate - that's a pretty scary story. Guess my life is boring...thank goodness. I can't match what anyone else has shared, that I can recall. I do know of an agent in our market who found a body (murdered) during a showing. Caused quite a stir in town. And the crime was solved as well.

Jeff

I had a listing and there was a new agent in my office who really wanted to do an open house, and since I don't do open houses, I told her she could do one at the house. She gets there, and there is dog poop all over the place and "used" feminine hygene products on the floor in the bathroom... she called laughing and in disgust. I told her to leave. THings like this kept happening so I terminated the listing. 3 years later, it still hasn't sold.

GATOR! I wrote about it a while back..so I won't repeat. STRANGER-than-Fiction

answer to your question....people in bed,gun collections in glass cased cabinets,"adult swing" bolted to the bedroom ceiling,big dogs you did not know were in the house....and photos of the sellers girlfriend -enlarged and posted on the bedroom door-should have been for his eyes only!

My contribution is soiled tidy-whities on a bedroom floor - for an open house. A showing where the seller apparently had a language problem (didn't understand he was to leave) and anwered the doorbell dripping wet holding a small washcloth. And of course, unflushed toilets, dog poop, and cat hairballs.

This wasn't a staging.. this was my rental I was trying to sell..... We had a townhouse with lousy tenants, and we needed to sell our home & the unit to buy the house we live in now. During one of the showings a very tall, muscular naked man was sitting on the couch and stayed there the entire showing..... NO they didn't buy it....

The scariest listing appt. I have ever had: An elderly lady who never threw anything away: Hypodermic needle, insulin bottles, newspaper, and trash. There were roaches crawling everywhere, even INSIDE the refrigerator!!! I was only in the house in the house for 5 minutes before I had to run outside & throw up. It was the most disgusting I ever saw!!! BTW.....I did take the listing after everything was cleaned up.

Ok, that was just BAD! I can't say I would have been able to leave and know more strangers were coming in.....scary thought. But......TLW ......what dead body? If it's something you've posted - sorry - but - inquiring minds DO want to know! My worst thing had to be bongs on a table (or at least that's what I was told they were......ahem) Another girl in our office had Barbies and Kens in a display case doing unmentionable things - to me that would be the worst! Dog poop in a bsement, not so good - and a client coming into a house when I didn't hear her drive up. Vacant house, I'm upstairs - she appears out of nowhere....bloodcurdling scream ensued (yes, it was me, not her!)

I guess in Pennsylvania that might be unusual. Here in mississippi guns are ways of life. They are in every home. I would not have thought much of the gun. I would have been concered if a child lived in the house and I would probably just picked it up and put it away and let the owner know where I put it. I have a loaded gun in my house now. it is in a locked box away from the children but I have one. You just have to respect them but god help the person that decides to break in my home. :)

sweett!!! I always wanted to hold one of those... ?

how heavy was it?

did you feel like you had some kind of power?

Just playing.. I am not sure I would be totally freaked out though... it's something that one would not expect though...

Did you wipe your prints off? did you use a glove to hold it,....

I am playing!!!

I showed a house once where we called the seller the night before and told them we were coming, on voice mail, and if there was an issue with the time frame to call back...no call back...went to house, let ourselves in with lockbox...seller was standing at top of stairs in his undershorts with a rifle pointing down at us. We immediately turned around, and walked out, locking the door behind us. Didn't want to stick around to see if he'd use it on us!

Sure beats the pet seal in the bathtub!

I have seen some really disgusting things in homes -- to tell you the truth I wonder why the listing agent would take on the listing in the first place -- and then they call for "Feedback" -- you have to be kidding! Oh well, the worst thing so far other than a couple going at it during the showing -- was the room with flying bats!

A loaded gun on the floor (loaded no less) and the owner knew you were going to be there?. Had it out last night and left it... I would have called the police. This homeowner is exactly why there is so many problems in the world we live in today. Careless, Stupid, selfish, and a lot more. Just seeing those pictures made me want to call the police and have the idiot arrested for endangering the lives he left in charge . Had it been me, I would have. Wow.

ouch! That would totally freak me out. I once had an ecentric couple who were into alternative kind of stuff (skulls, weird figurines) The first couple that loved the house decided against it because of the "demons" that the house possessed...

Kate, the strangest thing I ever saw in a house was money, lots, and lots and lots, and lots and lots of money. Scared me to death.

JUN

2007

in an open house I went to while looking to buy a house I found the sellers had not a clue in their FSBO that their teenage sons should put away their marijuana paraphrenalia before a showing

I've seen naked people, bongs, sex toys, lines of coke, hairballs, poop in toilets and out, and several guns, but the one that really freaked me out was opening a closet and finding a DOG. It was just sitting there, waiting for a command. Unfortunately it was dead. And stuffed. Mounted. The owner must have really, really loved that dog! Still, leaving a loaded gun on the floor is very irresponsible!

That would be scary. I definitely wouldn't touch it either. You absolutely did the right thing.

In Arizona we encounter more homes than you would think that have guns of some sort. Perhaps its a fall back to being a part of the "wild west". We always tell people that they need to get rid of the guns and not have them out where buyers can get their hands on them -- especially a child. And people we tell do put them away - we insist. But it's not uncommon to go into a listing on a broker tour, or to take a prospective buyer and see a gun ~that apparently they were either not told to get rid of, or they did not listen.

I haven't run into that here and the only "weird" thing I ran into was a guy who prayed and practiced "magic"...you know the voodoo stuff...and when the cleaning lady was moving the mattress found a knife underneath...

Sounds like this homeowner may be on track for a Darwin award.

"A Chronicle of Enterprising Demises
Honoring those who improve the species...by
accidentally removing themselves from it! "

I'm not sure if i would have freakout from seeing a gun in the house. I would have probably move it with a paper towl to a safer place in the house and notify the homeowner. Back in high school, i wrote an article about guns and its safe for some crazy project and i feel the gun related topics differ from areas you were grown up in. I work out in outter part of the city limit in rurual area and you will find plenty of guns in people's home and you never know if they are loaded. I don't know if you guys had experience with selling a hunter's home, but one how i showed had over 100 taxadermie animals ranging from bears to little tiny farret. The house was over 4500 sq. ft. and half of his downstairs was a personal mesum for his collection. He had your typical moose and dear head.

I don't know anyone has sold a rental house near college campus, but once you've seen those rentals, you've seen them all, everything else just doesn't come close. I've seen college rentals with people passed out in the back yard, garbage everywhere, naughty objects and affections that were previously mentioned. Besides, many of the top officials in our government have done pots and few other white powder in their life time.

maureen,, i actually like that art work of your client. it maybe little inappropriate but with a nice pants or kilts, he would look just fine. last time i saw one of those project was at washington DC's smithsonian museum.

Under the sofa, huh? I believe that is where Elvis stashed his gun after blasting that TV set... Glad no one small (kids) found it...

JUL

2007

What a story, Yes again, sure glad there were no kids around.

I'll give you the owner was wrong to leave the gun out when people were coming to move things. It is however only a gun. It's not alive it will not attack you. Its not a bomb it won't explode or jest go off. I don't think I've been in a house in the past 15 years that didn't hav at least one gun in it. Those who commented they'd "freak-out", You must have a very dull life or be wound really tight.

That being said, the owner of the gun should have been More responsible.

My favorite was a first showing I had with a young couple. She attending a local seminary school and he a grad student at OSU. They were refferred to me by a very religious friend who was also in seminary school.

We walk into the second home on the tour and the smell of pot is very strong. The house in in dissary, but I'm hoping they are naive enough to miss the smell.

We walk through the downstairs and head up to the second floor and are greeted with a stripper pole, I just stop. Hoping against hope they think it is a brace and scan my eyes to the right and there are pictures of different women, thankfully clothed, "demonstrating" the pole. We leave and the non-buyer says "this is one of those houses you buy and for six months you have people coming up trying to buy drugs from you."

Thankfully it wasn't the same as her friend, or it would have been a deal breaker.

Guns being found in this area are normal, we really don't think twice about it, I guess.

I have shown a house that right when we walked in the selling agent told us a skunk just died under the house. IT WAS AWFUL!

JUL

2007

I'm glad you didn't find a dead body to go along with the gun!

Well, after reading this blog, I'm feeling pretty blessed right now.

I thought dirty underwear, rude posters, marijuana, and beer fridges in bedrooms were bad to have to stage with......

Loaded gun? THAT would make me pretty pissed. I would have left the home right then and there. As one blogger had said before....what was the owner thinking?

Julia

Why would people do such a thing it's just beyond me! What if some silly kid was playing and found it underneath the couch and thought it was a toy gun?! People do leave the privatest thing around. I tripped over the seller's vibrator once. haha

cheers,

cindy

JUL

2007

My question would be how in the world could someone just forget the gun was there? The home was staged, so I take it not occupied...where is the need for a loaded gun if no one is living there?

JUL

2007

WOW!

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