Our agents dish on some of the oddest things they have come across in their real estate careers.
I was showing homes to a retired minister & his wife. We were at a scheduled appointment for a vacant home. I rang the doorbell, knocked & unlocked the door. Buyers were behind me and couldn’t see inside. There was a young couple 10 feet away on the living room carpet. They were in an amorous position & didn’t even know I was there! I pulled the door closed & told my Buyers that we would need to come back later.
Once, I sold a house where the basement stunk so bad that we had to wear masks to be able to breathe down there for more than 30 seconds. At one point, we were inching our way toward the back of the basement and saw a skunk. We did a 180 and high-tailed it out of there as fast as we could! As it turns out, the skunk we were so afraid of was actually dead.
I once listed and sold a commercial property that had a specific nude art gallery in the basement. Talk about a “WOW” factor!
My clients and I were making a day out of looking at homes from Divide down to Cripple Creek and back around to Florissant. We ended our day with a home in a remote part of Florissant. We couldn’t figure out why the square footage listed on the advertisement didn’t seem to match with the size of the house. Eventually, in the basement at the bottom of a set of stairs we found that there was a secret room. The entrance was completely hidden and it looked as if it were just a wall. Inside of the room we found some kind of bunker/command center. There were maps pinned up all over the walls and radio sets everywhere and a computer workstation. I have no idea what that guy was up to in there but I like to imagine it was something shady and part of a conspiracy.
I had an elderly gentleman client when I used to live in Baltimore. He expressed interest in a home he wanted to view and asked me to pick him and his new wife up the next day. He gave me the address of an apartment complex nearby and I agreed to pick him up the next morning.
I arrived and was met outside by the elderly (AT LEAST IN HIS 80’S) man and a young, very well endowed blond person of around 35. I blithely assumed that this was his granddaughter. Umm, not so. The lady was his new mail order ‘bride’ of a few weeks. He got in the back seat and she followed. I asked if one of them would like to sit up front but they declined.
What followed was backseat display of open affection the likes of which I hope never to be a witness to again! When we first got near the home to be shown, the man asked me to drive around the neighborhood for a while so they could have more quality time in the backseat of my car. Outside of throwing them out on the curb, I could think of no alternatives. I drove.
Finally, we went to the home, I showed them around, took them back to the apartment and they wrote an offer that was later accepted. I left and went to the full service car wash.
Last year I was showing a home to a buyer. The appointment was easy to set because the sellers were out of town. We arrived at the house and started walking through. The back hallway had been converted to a make-shift bedroom with a futon. Only after a few minutes of looking around did we realize there was a person sound asleep, laying on their back with their arms at their side and the blanket pulled completely over their head. We both gasped and stared long enough to make sure they were alive, then we quickly retreated out the front door. The buyer did not purchase that house.
