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Selling a Haunted House -- Well Kind of....

By
Real Estate Agent with Bill Cherry, Realtor 0124242

Haunted Houses Don't Always Look Like This One

I've looked at as well as  listed thousands of homes throughout my long career as a Realtor.

So it's probably reasonable to assume that I have come across a lot of surprises.

A few years ago, I saw where a listing in a very desirable Dallas area had expired, and my investigation showed that the house had had several consecutive listing agents.  Each of them had failed.

Me being me, I had to see for myself what in the world was the problem.

Why hadn't the house sold?  It looked like it was priced fairly well, and the photos of inside and out looked OK.

I prospected the guy, and he invited me to come for a look-see.

Everything was going pretty well until we got to looking at the bedrooms.  There were three.  One was the master bedroom, the second was being used as his home office and the third was his wife's exercise/ballet studio, complete with a ballet bar and mirrors around the bottom half of the walls.

And then we started down the hall.  There were three closets.  In each, there was a single mattress on the floor, pictures on the wall, and other stuff.  It turned out each of those was being used a child's bedroom.

We went into the den, and there were very obvious foundation problems. 

So when we got ready to talk about why the house hadn't sold, I told him that he would have to get the kids' bedrooms out of the closets and the foundation repaired.

He said he didn't have enough money to repair the foundation, and his wife wasn't going to give up her exercise studio, and he wasn't going to give up his home office.

The kids, he said, loved their closet bedrooms.

I suggested to him that it was most likely that the general public was recoiling at the idea of children living in closets, and that leaving the foundation to be corrected by a buyer was also likely to reduce interest.

He told me that they had no plans to change anything.  I said I wouldn't be able to help him sell his home.

Sunday, Patty and I happen to drive down that street at least four years after my visit.  This time there was a worn-out cardboard FSBO sign in the yard.  I checked the tax rolls, and the guy and his wife still owned the house.

Inside were the ghosts of Realtors' past.  Mine wasn't one of them.

BILL CHERRY, REALTOR
Since 1966
Dallas
214 503-8563

 

 

Comments (3)

Michelle Edwards
Realty One Group Trilogy - San Bernardino, CA
Licensed Realtor® in California and Nevada

You were wise to walk away from that one. Perhaps it will be marketable when those self absorbed homeowners have an empty nest. Apart from that, I enjoyed your storytelling skills! 

May 31, 2017 07:16 AM
Myrl Jeffcoat
Sacramento, CA
Greater Sacramento Realtor - Retired

I remember a discussion at an office meeting several years ago.  I asked the question, "When a ghost materializes, does it become a material fact; but becomes an immaterial fact if it does not materialize?"

Jun 02, 2017 12:49 AM
sami gupta
templates - Loogootee, IN

bibliography is a list of sources such as books, journals, Web sites, periodicals, etc. which one has used for topic research. Bibliographies are often known as “References” or “Works Cited” depending on the format being used. A bibliography usually just includes the bibliographic information i.e. the author, title, publisher read more.

Jul 14, 2017 08:51 PM