Between Meeting a Client and Closing the Deal, Anything Can -- and Does -- Happen. Professionals Share Their Craziest Tales.
Saturday, November 10, 2007
The people who help buy and sell homes see it all.
Every day they interact with clients who are experiencing what can be the most exhilarating and stressful financial transaction of a lifetime. They glimpse people's quirks, their tastes, their finances, and some of their most personal and awkward moments.
And then there are the animals. Lots of animals. Here, some real estate industry veterans share a few on-the-job stories.
-- Dina ElBoghdady, Washington Post staff writer
Buzzed"I was meeting a client for the very first time at a house that was under construction. To get in, we had to climb a board propped up against the house. He must have upset a bee's nest on his way in because when we got into the foyer, bees were swarming all around him, attacking him. They were going up his shirt, and he was yelling at me: 'Get them out! Get them out!' So I'm reaching up his shirt, batting at the bees, and then they start going up his shorts. He had to strip down to his boxers. It was awful. It was also the most interesting first meeting I'd ever had."
-- Susan D. Fadoul
W.C. & A.N. Miller Realtors, McLean
Full Disclosure"A long time ago, I sat in on a settlement. The buyers, a married couple, were signing the final loan application. The wife got to what we call the obligations page, where all the buyers' debts are listed. Normally, most people just sign it, but she paused to read it and spotted her spouse's alimony and child-support obligations. She questioned this and he said, 'I thought you knew.' She just turned red in the face and said, 'I never even knew you were married before!' She got up from the table and walked out. That delayed the deal a day or two. We redid the loan in his name because he qualified on his own. I don't know what happened to the marriage."
-- Ray Hrabec
SunTrust Mortgage, Vienna
Dark Side of Paris"I worked on this house that was absolutely crazy. It was owned by an elderly gentleman, who said he'd attended design school in Paris. The floor was black and white checkered. There was red shag carpeting on the spiral staircase, old chandeliers and gold fixtures everywhere. Then there was the toile wallpaper. . . . It looked like the house threw up. I was micromanaged every step of the way. He didn't want to put much money into revamping it, and he argued with me about color theory. I won part of the battle. I stripped the carpet and cleaned up the wood floors. I took the wallpaper down and painted the walls a soft white. He absolutely would
not budge on the checkered floors."
-- Patricia Barta
Staging by Patricia, Great Falls
Getting Their Goats"I was reviewing a contract for a house in Potomac, and I found that one of the contingencies was that two live goats must convey with the property. Now we've seen swing sets and pool equipment convey, but two live goats? So I called the agents involved and found out that the property had an agricultural tax exemption. The owners kept goats and a few horses on what was essentially a mini-farmette. To keep that tax break, the new owners needed to keep at least the two goats, Jake and Mindy. I don't think the buyers were interested in farming, but they were big animal lovers, so they decided to go for it."
-- P. Joy Siegel
Settlement Pros, Bethesda
Don't Come In"Real estate agents in training are always taught about safety. You are told to leave the front door open, especially when showing a home to a member of the opposite sex. During my first year as an agent, I was showing a male client a fixer-upper on Capitol Hill. There was a big sign at the front door saying the water service had been turned off; please don't use the toilet. We went upstairs, and a few minutes later, we heard someone enter the house. We went downstairs to investigate. I walked past the dining room and then to the bathroom, where I saw a person who had wandered in off the street, using the facilities right under the sign saying: 'Water service turned off.' I now keep the doors closed."
-- Joan Caton
Cromwell
Long & Foster, Washington
Sign Here, Please!"I once had a settlement that lasted forever. It involved a borrower who was what we in the business call 'a reader,' someone who wants to sit and read all this stuff. She called me at 11 a.m. to say her dad would pick up the documents, which he did around 1 o'clock. We met at around 6 p.m. On every single paper, she changed her mind and put the pen down. I went home and had dinner, came back and finished her deal at 3 a.m. This was refinance, not even a purchase. When I finally handed the signed loan paper to the loan processor and loan officer the next day, they applauded me for surviving."
-- Harvey Jacobs
Stress-Free Settlements, Rockville
In Good Hands Now"This is probably the strangest way I've gotten a potential client: I got a call from the producer of 'America's Most Wanted.' It turns out they were doing a show on a local builder who took deposits from buyers and then fled. They were looking for a construction site where they could shoot interviews with six of the couples that were ripped off by this guy. I let them use one of my sites, and I had a chance to talk to the couples afterward for about an hour about how the buying process should have worked. One of those couples contacted me a month ago, and they have since talked to one of my project designers twice."
-- Tim Burch Jr.
Burch Builders Group, Warrenton
One Call in a Million"In the brokerage business, agents never want to hang out in the office or take desk duty. They think it's a waste of time and that nobody is going to cold-call the office. But I walked in the office at 8 a.m. recently, with a cup of coffee in one hand and a briefcase in the other. The phone was ringing, and I considered letting it roll over into voice mail. But I picked up. On the other end was a gentleman from the U.K. who was interested in buying property. Twenty-four hours later, he had purchased a $1.2 million property and he was looking for plenty of others to invest in."
-- Dave DeSantis
Tutt Taylor & Rankin Sotheby's International Realty, Washington
Cat Congestion"We've done two large jobs that involve animal hoarding. The worst was a single-family home with more than 400 cats in it. Apparently, the owner did not live in the house but came by periodically to feed the cats. The neighbors complained because they could smell the stench from the sidewalk, and the house was eventually condemned. Animal control made 12 to 15 visits to remove all the animals, and our crew came in to clean up. The cleanup must've cost $40,000, not counting any construction work. We took photos to document our work and in one of the pictures, we saw this pair of eyes on a corner shelving unit above the workers in the living room. That creature was watching the progress for several hours, and nobody ever saw it."
-- Chris Coffin
Service Master of Alexandria
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