Forget “if these walls could talk.” Sometimes a property’s piping hot tea comes right from the listing agents themselves.
And whether they represent a one-bedroom New York City walk-up or a 10,000-square-foot mansion in Los Angeles, they’ve probably seen it all while on the job. We’re talking meth labs, murder scenes, exotic animals, sex on the roof (seriously) and enough X-rated art to fill the Met. In fact, many agents have redefined PTSD.
“There’s no formal treatment for Post Traumatic Showing Disorder,” said Mike Bell, chief chuckler in charge at the Lighter Side of Real Estate. He says the only thing agents can do to cope with the “stressors” they’re exposed to while working is to commiserate with each other, hopefully laughing along the way. In fact, having a sense of humor is just as important as having a real estate license.
On her podcast, “Real Estate, Real Laughs,” LA-based real estate agent Valerie Fitzgerald regales listeners with tales that not even Hollywood’s most creative writers could come up with. Think a client faking their own murder to get out of a contract, hidden rooms with sex hotlines, sharks swimming in the living room and celebrities showing up to showings in elaborate disguises.
“Michael got out of the car dressed in a total Arab outfit with a long beard,” said Fitzgerald who was once hired to help the late Michael Jackson find a house in 2005. He was keen on a Beverly Hills property leased by a member of the Saudi royal family and thought showing up to the address with a headdress, and saying “Hala hala,” would get him in the door.
The house wasn’t currently available, and Fitzgerald advised against it. But Jackson didn’t think the situation was so black or white.
“In the end everyone laughed and they invited him into the house,” said Fitzgerald. She also told the Post that the King of Pop would throw off the paparazzi by riding around looking at listings in an older VW bus that no one would ever expect to see him in.
David Kean, another LA-based agent, remembers the time a client, one of the city’s most in-demand dominatrixes, showed up to his office with the CEO of a major company in the back seat of her Range Rover.
“He was blindfolded, hog-tied and naked with a ball-gag in his mouth,” Kean told The Post before adding that it made him second-guess his profession.
To prepare for showings, he’s had to hide everything from “copious amounts of cocaine” to portable sling frames (meant for fornication, not photos). “I’ve also had to throw a blanket over dildos,” he said with a laugh. “Who forgets to put away a Thermos-size dildo?”
Indeed, the old adage “sex sells” doesn’t always apply to real estate.
Joy Aumann, a San Diego-based agent and co-founder of LuxurySoCalRealty, once had to invite the police to a listing at the last minute when a pair of prospective buyers locked themselves in the master bedroom — on purpose. Of course, she knocked on the door before calling the cops. However, the noises the couple was making were so loud they probably didn’t hear her.
“From naked buyers to amorous couples, there’s always something unexpected,” said Aumann. “While these wild experiences can be uncomfortable and even terrifying, they’re also a reminder of the importance of being prepared for anything in the world of real estate.”
In fact, Cara Ameer, a bicoastal agent, says her truth is stranger than fiction. One listing she represented in Florida involved some rather creepy pests.
“We discovered bats in the attic,” said Ameer, adding the best part of the story is they had to wait until bat maternity season was over to call a bat man to get rid of them. “Bats are a federally protected species so they cannot be exterminated and can only be extracted, if you will, between mid-April to mid-August or mid-May to mid-September, depending on what part of the country you are located in.”
And sometimes extraction is solely at the seller’s discretion.
Fitzgerald once unwittingly walked into a Beverly Hills home about to hit the market with no furniture, just tall rows of cages filled with snakes. The seller was a well-known rockstar (she won’t name names, but word on the street is Slayer guitarist Kerry King has quite the cobra collection) living in the home.
“I told him I couldn’t show the house like this with all the snakes,” said Fitzgerald. “He said, ‘But they’re my kids.’” She responded by telling him buyers probably wouldn’t want “the kids” home when they walked through the house.
Buyers also don’t want dead bodies laying around, nor do real estate agents.
New York-based real estate investor and house flipper Ben Wagner told The Post he’s still dealing with the trauma of finding a crime scene at the listing of a townhome for sale in a “posh neighborhood” three years ago.
“Firstly, the door was half open, and it smelled hideous,” said Wagner. “All the lights were switched off, so I tripped as soon as I entered the house. When I fell, I saw a severed head right in front of me.”
Despite the dark, he was able to make out blood splatter on the walls and even more bodies strewn about.
Naturally, he puked. Next, he called the police — good real estate agents have them on speed dial — who showed up only to inform Wagner that it was a fake crime scene. The bodies were mutilated mannequins, and the blood was probably from Party City.
When Wagner tried contacting the sellers to ask about the haunted house they’d surprised him with, they ghosted him. To this day, Wagner still doesn’t know why the listing looked like the Manson Family had just moved in. However, he has a hunch that the sellers got cold feet.
“They could have just told me they didn’t want to sell,” says Wagner. “Enacting a fake crime scene was completely unnecessary.”
This content was originally published here.
