I love to hold open houses, even to the extent that if I don't have one of my own, I'll call people in my office and ask if I can hold theirs open. So far, no one has declined my request.

Several weeks ago I was going to hold open a vacant foreclosed condo. I went over on Monday to check out the condo and make sure that the electricity was on and that the cooling system worked. I quickly realized that it was not vacant. There were 426,591 generations of fleas living in that 1,500-SF condo.

Obviously, I was disappointed because I so wanted to hold that condo open, but I absolutely hate fleas, which is why my cat, Zoey, is an indoor cat.

I was determined to hold it open, though, because it was just too nice of a condo in too nice of a complex. So I quickly left before I got infested and went to the store to buy some foggers. I fogged the place that evening, vacuumed the carpet and along the baseboards the next morning, and repeated the process on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, hoping that I could air out the place on Friday and get it set up with some small tables, towels, candles, and plants for the open houses on Saturday and Sunday.

It did the job, and I picked up a new buying Client that Sunday. We made a purchase offer on another foreclosed condo in the same complex, which we were outbid on, but we're still looking. I would not have that Client if I had let my hatred of fleas get in the way of actually doing something about the infestation. Sometimes a little extra effort can result in great rewards.