Sellers, Please Evacuate the Building

Miles Driven: 137
Minutes of Video Recorded: 32:46
Spider Webs I had to Brush Out of the Way With My Sandaled Foot: 3

I’ve been videoing houses (mansions, really) for an out of town client lately. We are trying to get a good number of possibilities identified for them so when they come into town next, we’re not seeing the obvious ‘no’ houses, just the fabulous, amazing, ‘no, I love this one MORE than the last one!’ houses.

Friday I jumped in the GOV and ran a couple of errands in Queen Creek and Gilbert and then circled the southeast valley and headed up the 101 to North Scottsdale to preview and video four more for this particular client. You’d think, with my amazingly climate controlled super fantastic minivan, that this would be a fairly comfortable drive, but I still exited my orange-mobile with a severe case of sweaty bum. Like I’m not sure Febreze is going to help. Do they make Fahurricane? Not attractive, is what I’m saying.

So this weekend, after I had posted my videos to Youtube and emailed the links to my clients, they sent me an email thanking me for the videos with the comment that they can always tell by my voice if the homeowner is standing over my shoulder. This I completely believe.

I think the general public does not understand how incredibly awkward it is for a potential buyer to be viewing a house when the home owner (or even the other agent) is hovering over our shoulder. Several of the houses I saw on Friday, the agent and seller were both there. Which is understandable and acceptable because I was just previewing the properties, but still not comfortable.

Take, for example, the third house that I saw on Friday. Sure, the yard was spectacular and the house had enough rooms and the correct kind of layout for my clients, but there was a gigantic British flag painted on the wall of one of the kids’ rooms and a huge tree across the other one and a sky ceiling. The clients I’m working for have grown children and no interest in repainting and/or renovating almost anything. They have a big budget to spend, and they expect it to be move-in ready. But what was I going to say as I’m moving around this house with the agent literally two steps behind me (smiling creepily in several sections of video when I turned to pan around the room and caught him) and the mom/seller rushing around the house picking up laundry and putting away groceries?

Possible narration: “Um, you guys are totally going to hate this house. It’s messy and not organized and the kitchen is not even very fabulous or upgraded. Plus it has a great room… EW. And the laundry room? OMG, don’t even get me started…”

What I actually ended up with: “So…. This is the kitchen (gesture to the island, pan around, try to avoid creepy Realtor)….. it has counters over here. And the laundry room. There appears to be room for a washer and dryer in here (slow pan over the itty bitty laundry room with laundry spilling out of it).”

Vacant houses are really my favorite. They give me the opportunity to marvel outloud at some of their crazy features, like this pool:

Sweaty bum, creepy agents, gas drain and all, at least this job is entertaining.