I got a call to show one of our REO listings in Lakeside, CA, about 40 minutes from my home office in Encinitas. While, my brokerage has had the listing nearly 80 days, other than a few nicely cropped photos, I've never seen it. I made sure I had plenty of time to find the property and arrive before my appointment with the gentleman who was pre-approved for a conventional loan, interested in working only with the listing brokerages of the homes he was previewing.
Guided by my IPhone GPS, I navigated the cracked and curvy concrete road upward toward the hidden cliffside property, until I saw a sign: TURNKEY HOMES AND LOAN with a BANK OWNED rider a top, posted next to a vanishing driveway.
I parked my car and got out to see how steep the grade actually was, as it seemingly fell off the side of the hill. It was as steep a grade as I've ever driven. Even in San Francisco! Due of the elevation and positioning of the lot, it provided amazing panoramic views of the surrounding hills, a small pond, a lake and a distant golf course below. Did the view compensate for the ridiculously steep driveway framed by overgrown weeds and an unattractive chain link fence? Perhaps the photos of the interior were as they seemed, and all would be worth the drive.
I walked around the house, located the front door, and accessed the key just like I've done hundreds of times before. But, unlike hundreds of times before, I was about to have one of those "first" experiences I could have done without. As I slowly pushed the door open in curious anticipation and stepped onto the threshold, it happened! Hundreds of pincher-bugs (earwigs) rained down upon me like a dark slimy storm of nasty creepy-crawlers. Seems they had nested within the door itself. No, I didn't scream like a little girl on her first roller coaster ride, but I did belt out a potty word or two as I quickly stepped in to discover the vastness of these unexpected trespassers. So much for being vacant...
The clients hadn't yet arrived when I started shoveling the multitude of tiny pinching invaders out the front door with the only thing I had - a listing stapled to some comps. I maintained a fairly hurried pace until I heard the clients approaching. Wrongly, I thought that I had gotten most of them out the door, when two young men, a young woman and the client's mother arrived. That's when the younger woman shrieked! Not only were the pincher-bugs on the steps leading into the property I just evicted, there were hundreds crawling over the front door and into the house. As I looked up, I saw armies more heading towards the vaulted ceilings.
While, the younger buyer enjoyed the incredible view (past the bugs), his mother felt that the driveway was much too steep. and the house showed a little darker than she had hoped.
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