While pondering which experience to reveal in the ActiveRain Crazy Real Estate Agent Story Challenge this month, I had many old memories surface from my 40 years as a real estate agent.
In last month’s challenge, I told the tale of listing the home of an elderly couple who had a very abusive adult son, living with them. Their desire was to escape his abuse. They hoped to sell their home without his realizing it. We put the home on the market without a sign. All showings were arranged through me, and the home shown while the son was at work, or otherwise occupied.
The home sold quickly. During the last days of escrow, an uncle who lived approximately 100 mile north of us, helped out by arranging for the son to visit several days. During his absence, the son’s belongings were put in storage, and the storage key was left with a neighbor.
The pair moved across country, and left no forwarding address for the son. The transaction went more smoothly than I had anticipated it might. There was one extra thing important contractually – I insisted on providing a disclosure to the buyer about the circumstances surrounding the son. I didn’t want any legal repercussions from his potential volatility. Ultimately, to my knowledge the buyers of the home were never disturbed by him.
In addition to that story however, I have experienced at least 2 encounters with nudes during showings. One incident involved a seller coming down the hall from the shower, who hadn’t heard the doorbell ring. But, the most outrageous incident, involved another agent, who myself, and my client found nude, doing the wild thing on the floor of a vacant townhome. I had found no key in the lockbox, but the door was unlocked. Because the home was listed as vacant, we entered. My client (a single woman) didn’t buy that particular home. I’m sure the special vision when she entered that room would have lingered for a while if she had. For a few years after, when we would see each other, we would chuckle about that “showing.” As for that agent caught in the act, he was a fairly well known and successful agent during the 1980s, but he lost market potency in the 1990s, and simply faded away from the local real estate realm.
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