I am recovering, if you are wondering why I haven't posted in a while. My sides are aching, like I have been hit repeatedly in the sides with a piece of pipe. The congestion is gratefully leaving my lungs.
That makes my work a lot of fun, because i do not use a showing service or have an assistant. Currently I am working several contracts...simultaneously, and trying to keep a couple of pending sales for my listings on track to close. Sure makes life fun, when you start having spasms of coughing.
Sounds like the flu or a cold, doesn't it. Actually, I was poisoned by a home.
I have a peculiar insistence for working with my Buyers. I will not work with one that will not let me preview homes first. Last year i was confronted with squatters in vacant homes more than a dozen times. I have seen as many as fifteen illegal alien squatters hiding in a cellar crawl, when I was inspecting a home. Other times i have chased kids out of properties, and even adults who needed a place to perform ... recreational activities. I have also had three knives and a gun pulled in four separate instances. Now I can add poisoning to the list of things I have experienced in a home.
the defaulting homeowners returned the home to the bank, and the agent listed the property. On entry, i noticed a bit of clutter, immediately. However, the house was newer, about 2-3 years old, so, as is my custom, I started checking the carpet padding for my clients. the padding felt good, and the underlayment was in decent shape with few creaks and groans. Click,Click Click with the camera for my virtual tour, and I continued to the upstairs, in the normal pattern I view a home. Then as I got thorough the home, I ended the tour in the basement, and saw the problem I was about to face. There were at least 50 mouse and rat traps, and about 40+ pounds of bagged DCon poison. What i hadn't realized was that the dust I had seen throughout the home was powdered poison which had been worked into the carpet, and was laying on counter surfaces. I had inhaled that dust over a 10-15 minute period in the home.
over the next couple of days the effects started to accumulate, and I noticed my vision blurring when I was reading, and then the respiratory effects settled in. I was horridly thirsty, nauseous, and a bit disoriented. then there was the coughing, which is now subsiding a little over a week later.
If you don't preview before you show, you may seriously wish to consider the benefits of doing so:
1. you protect your clients form exposure to nuts, squatters, and dangers such as the above
2. You get a better idea of what the features are that will interest your client
3. You can preview more homes faster than your client can go through them in showings.They get to actually see more homes in a shorter period of time and eliminate the ones they aren't interested in more quickly.
4. You build a catalog of your previews, and can literally show the neighborhood via your tours. My catalog has about 40,000 Denver Metro and Colorado Springs homes in it.
5. You can handle more client's needs in a shorter period of time, which translates to more sides closed.
6. You can work a larger area more easily
7. You will know the layout, and can plan a knockout tour
8. You can better target the home for sale to other potential buyers.
9, Your knowledge increases your competitiveness.
10. You should do this anyway...
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