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|  Open Houses General Business Guerilla Marketing Buyers . . . Beware Sorry, Right Number Showing Nightmares Wit, Wisdom, and Sarcasm Property Management Issues Life with Animals The Darndest Things Mistaken Identities Home Improvement Cops! Car Trouble More Resources: Running Great Meetings Facilitator References | Humorous Anecdotes: Cops! One Good Cop As I was rushing to an office meeting one morning, I floored the accelerator. I couldn’t be late. Suddenly, a police officer appeared from nowhere, pulled me over, and wrote a ticket. After he had finished his speech of speeding, I asked whether he knew anyone who wanted to buy or sell real estate. He looked at me bewildered and said, “I want to sell my townhouse.” Immediately, I set up an appointment for the next day and listed his townhouse. You never know who might need real estate assistance. Debra Jean Pompei Pompei Properties Glasgow, Mont. There Was a Seller Who Had a Dog As a buyer and I arrived at one of my listings, a teenage boy met us at the door and showed us in. The showing went very well until we got to the master bedroom. A little Yorkshire terrier ran out from under the bed and started biting my ankles. While I danced around in high heels avoiding the dog’s nips, the buyer grabbed the dog, put it in the closet, and told the boy that he should keep the dog locked up when people were looking at the house. Later that day, the buyer decided he wanted to go back to see the house. But this time he showed up at my office dressed for work in his police officer’s uniform. Once again, we drove to the house and the teenager met us at the door. But instead of inviting us in, he leaned against the door and sarcastically said, “So why the cop?” He thought I had brought back an officer because of the dog. The buyer calmly replied, “Cops buy houses, too.” The boy finally let us in—and the police officer eventually did buy the house. Nancy S. Jordan Meyer Real Estate Co. St. Charles, Mo. A State of Alarm A buyer called and asked whether I’d show him a home. We scheduled an appointment, but since I hadn’t seen the home before, I went early to preview it. As I walked through the deserted house, I heard a sharp, high-pitched sound. The noise stopped for a few seconds and then started again. I searched frantically through the house and the basement to see whether I could find what was causing the noise. When I came back upstairs, I saw a police officer standing in the living room. In one breath, I tried to explain that I was a salesperson waiting for a buyer and that I had heard a strange noise coming from somewhere in the house. He looked at me oddly and said “Mrs. Brown, I’m the buyer.” I sighed with relief. Then we searched the house and found that the noise was coming from a smoke detector that had a low battery. Lorelee Brown Fairfield Real Estate Fairfield, Iowa Really, Officer . . . Don’t Know Those People I got a call from a lawyer who needed me to list a vacation home to settle an estate. Because the owner had died overseas and apparently had been buried with his keys, the attorney asked me to bring a locksmith to the property. Talk about your weekend getaway! The property was next to a beautiful lake and was ultramodern, with mood lighting inside and out. I was ecstatic as I planted my sign in three different places, and I stood back each time to see how it looked from the road. The lawyer proclaimed pay dirt as he instructed his assistant to inventory the extensive collection of expensive personal items. After about 45 minutes, the lawyer looked up from his papers and said, “We’re in the wrong house.”Just then two sheriffs pulled up, it started to rain, and the mosquitoes came out. (You should have seen me standing next to my sign trying to tell the police I wasn’t involved.) Later we found the right house. It was easy to enter because the front door had been kicked in, and the broken windows provided a refreshing breeze that helped stem the odor of decay and abandonment. The unique fixer-upper sold for $9,700. Jeff Heuser Crossroads Real Estate Portage, Mich. An Arresting Prospect On the way to an appointment, I was pulled over for an illegal U-turn. “If you saw the NO U-TURN sign, why didn’t you stop?” asked the police officer. “Because I didn’t see you, sir,” I answered truthfully. I got the ticket, but I told the officer that he owed me some business. Because I had missed an appointment, his ticket had cost me a sale, on top of the fine and insurance hike. It worked—I sold him a house. And why did he trust a traffic violator? “Because you were honest,” he said. “You admitted that you saw the No U-TURN sign but not me. Everyone else denies even seeing the sign.” Gwen Coronado Coronado Realty Scripps Ranch, Calif. An Alarm Triggers a Buying and Selling Spree My partner and I were showing homes to some prospects. As we opened the door to one of them, we saw the alarm’s warning light flashing and realized we didn’t have the combination. Within seconds the alarm started shrieking. Some neighbors came to check out the source of the commotion. When the police left, the neighbors asked to see the house. They fell in love with it and decided to buy it. We listed and sold their house, and the original owners of the house with the alarm bought another one from us. Not bad—three transactions all thanks to a house alarm. Dorothy E. Hinz ERA-Queen City Realty Edison, N.J. Wanted: The Vanishing Prospect I had been in the real estate business for three months when a twenty some-thing man came to my office to see some homes. He followed me in a chauffeur-driven Cadillac and made an offer on the first home we saw. He gave me the number to the presidential suite at a local hotel so that I could tell him whether his 90 percent cash down offer was accepted. Since the seller was out of town, it took me a week or so to get back to the buyer. When I called, he had disappeared. Four months later, the FBI called and asked me whether I knew the buyer. The agents said the man had robbed a bank in the city—for the second time—and they had found my business card in his wallet. Marc Sturdevant Matthew J. Freda Real Estate Callicoon, N.Y. It's Only Money . . . One well-meaning San Diego salesperson lent some out-of-state clients his car. Well, it seems the salesperson had acquired about 30 parking tickets. The authorities spotted the buyers and the hot little coupe in Orange County. Since the car was one county away from home and the buyers were two time zones removed from their ID address, they were hauled into the local hoosegow and detained until the police could find the salesperson the next day. Blowing a sale was only the beginning of this salesperson's losses. Legend has it that he forked over some airline tickets to compensate the buyers for their trouble and also paid for the motel they never got to stay in, since they had to check in at the pokey. Then he paid the 30 parking tickets to get his car out of hock. In her newsletter, an enterprising salesperson with a 150-house farm in the San Francisco Bay area offered to round up overdue library books in her market, return them to the library, and pay the fines. A coworker asked a disc jockey acquaintance to spread the good news on drive-time radio. If it was publicity the salesperson wanted, she got it. She spent the better part of a week collecting books and returning them. Happily, the library got wind of what had happened and waived most of the fines. I'm not exempt from unexpected expenses, either. My colleagues and I pledged 25 cents for every lap a friend's daughter could swim for a school fund-raiser. Little did we know she was an Olympic hopeful who would knock out a mile before breakfast just to get her eyes open. A salesperson gave the right key but the wrong address to a locksmith with instructions to rekey the locks on a sold house. The key obviously didn't fit--only a minor inconvenience to the locksmith, who simply picked and changed the old lock. When the owner returned and couldn't get in, a neighbor told her that XYZ Lock Co. had just left. The locksmith explained his service call, and the salesperson got to do the whole thing over again: same stuff, different house. Upside: a prosperous day for the locksmith. --Karl Breckenridge is owner-broker of Breckenridge Realty Co., Reno, Nev. Clinched! Ever need a third-party push to clinch a deal? Sharon Dudney, of All-American Homes Real Estate, Fayetteville, N.C., got that important boost recently. Standing in the driveway of the house she had just shown some prospects, she was discussing its attributes when a man stopped his car at the end of the driveway and called out, "Are you the new neighbors?" The prospects said, "Not yet, but we might be." As if on cue, "the man then introduced himself and told us he lived three doors down and was a county sheriff," Dudney recalls. "He went on to tell us about the community watch program, what a great neighborhood it was, and how they all looked out for one another. He told us a little about the neighbors and the adjoining property for sale, wished the prospects well, and started to drive away." Incredulous, Dudney called out to him, "Hey, thanks a lot!" Then she turned to the prospects and told them straight-faced, "I paid him to do that." The prospects closed on the house three weeks later. --Christina Hoffmann Spira Car Trouble Sudsy Showing So that her car would be spic-and-span for a showing, salesperson Gloria Renoux-Moody, CRS®, of Camelot Real Estate, Pueblo, Colo., stopped by an automatic car wash on her way to the appointment. ''Halfway through the soap cycle the system stopped, leaving the car covered in soap bubbles, and me stranded in the car wash,'' Renoux-Moody remembers. She couldn't back out because of the line of cars behind her, she couldn't go forward, and she couldn't get the attention of an attendant because no one could see her through the soapy car windows. How about her cell phone? That would have been a great idea except the car wash had recently changed ownership and its name, so directory assistance wouldn't have been of much help. ''Being resourceful, I opened the door and squeezed out, trying to avoid all the soap,'' she says. ''As I congratulated myself on remaining dry, the robot arm suddenly started up and sprayed me head to toe with soap. The attendants came running to my rescue and stopped the car wash.'' She made it to the appointment 15 minutes later, and despite her sopping wet appearance, she sold the prospects the house.--Christina Hoffmann Spira Driving Ms. Buyer When I started selling real estate, I was having a difficult time financially and had to drive an old, beat-up car to show properties. On one occasion, a buyer met me at the office and we drove in my car to see a listing. For some reason, she insisted on riding in the backseat. In the excitement of a possible sale, I forgot to tell her that every once in a while my car would backfire very loudly. And as luck would have it, the car broke its own backfiring record and blew off the muffler just as we arrived at the property. Embarrassed, I looked back at the buyer through my rearview mirror. She looked as if she had just seen a ghost. Once she regained her composure, I showed her the listing. She said that she liked the house and wanted to buy it right away but on one condition—that she’d never have to get into my car again. Carl R. DeMusz DeMusz Real Estate Agency Cape May Court House, N.J. Cleaning Up My Act I had recently listed a home for $229,000 and was feeling pretty good about myself. So I decided to treat myself and get my car washed. After all, successful salespeople should maintain clean cars to make a good impression on prospects. Besides, I had a coupon for a free wax. At the car wash, the attendant motioned for me to pull forward onto the automated track. But before I went through, I thought I had better remind him about my free wax. I lowered my window just in time for him to plunge a wet, soapy mop through the window and into my face. (He was just trying to get the worst of the dirt off the car before it went through the car wash.) The incident left me and the interior of my car soaking wet. So much for my professional appearance. There was one good thing, though, about this mishap. I wasn’t charged for the car wash. Gwenn Clark Ambrose & Shoemaker—Better Homes and Gardens Horsehead, N.Y. Decisions Made in the Heat of the Moment I once worked with a salesperson who drove a snazzy 1967 Chevrolet that didn’t have air-conditioning. One day another salesperson, who drove a $40,000 luxury car, said to him, “How do you expect to sell anybody a house when prospects have to ride around in an old jalopy like that? The other salesperson replied, “If you take a customer out in your climate—controlled car and I take one out in mine, which customer do you think is going to make a decision faster? David A. Becker David A. Becker, Inc. Pueblo, Colo. A Captive Audience After spending months looking for the right van in which to chauffeur prospects around town, I chose a cushiony one with a sliding electronic door. I was excited about the high-tech door and decided I’d lock it automatically and tell prospects they couldn’t get out until they signed a contract. I told some fun-loving prospects about my strategy, and we all laughed. But then my prank became a reality: The door was stuck, and I couldn’t open it. Eventually, however, I was able to get them out. A few days later they bought a $300,000 home. Beth McKinney Howard Perry and Walston—Phyliss Wolborsky, REALTORS®-- Better Homes and Gardens Cary, N.C. | |