You're a Maine real estate broker, some of your listings are owned by sellers out of state, vacant.
And the
basements in those unoccupied house listings may have rising water. With pre-spring water levels increasing in Maine with rain not snow, those basements are a time bomb ticking. Scope out the places, even the ones that never get water because this year they may break the shut out record.
When large banks of snow are plowed next to a home, when the place is down hill from a hill on all sides, ground water, melting snow has to go somewhere. You can not get rid of water, you just give it another place to go. Sub pumps and open drains can handle some of the water if they are working property.
But how would you feel the next house showing at a place that when you enter the kitchen door you can see your breath. And think initially out of oil for the furnace. NOooooo, it's the furnace got tired of treading the rising water coming in to the cellar.
It got high enough to shut the furnace off, which leads to frozen pipes which causes water to pour from the ceilings of the busted fixtures, pipes on the second floor. But your owner says I have a sub pump, that should not happen. Well, someone unplugged it. Or the floatation device that turns itself on when it rises, didn't. Was 
twisted or just rusted off.
Or the unit on it's side under hockey equipment, all that camping gear threw in the corner late one Sunday night.
Never sorted out to clear the way for Mr Sub Pump.
His very important job if a wet spring / late winter happens like Maine is getting now.Scope out those empty homes, email to warn the owners in Florida, Arizona and South Carolina to let them know the 80 degree, has not rained for two weeks is not the same weather channel you have been watching as you pull on your gum rubber fly fishing waders. Maine, four seasons, just once in a while the white fluffy snow is rain, a tad icy. This is one of those times with river flooding the next topic to come up on the media radar of the wire services, talking head journalists. So spread the word. You yourself are not such a hot swimmer. Your friend's or your own furnace is even worse and needs a life line if the cellar ground water causes hide tides in the basement.
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