This cracked me up!

by Loren Keim


Some of the unwise things that home owners say when they're trying to sell their home continue to amaze me. Sellers, being emotionally invested in their property, are often their own worst enemy, making statements that absolutely cost them a sale.
As an example, a few years ago, I had a young couple named Stacey and Dennis, looking at a property along a very busy road near Whitehall, Pennsylvania for the third time, a house that was located at least a hundred feet off the road, behind a line of trees, but was only one door off a major intersection. The layout reminded Stacey of her grandmother's home, and she also appreciated the convenience of being very close to a major shopping district. Dennis loved the convenience of the home's proximity to his work, just five minutes away. Neither was bothered by the noise from the busy intersection, which apparently, was the primary complaint of potential buyers who had looked at the house previously.
As we were about to leave for the office to write up an offer, the seller pulled into the drive, and hurried out of his car towards us. "Wait a minute, wait a minute," he yelled, waving his arms. "Come back to the house. I want to show you something."
Given the circumstances, I could scarcely refuse, and in a few minutes we were standing in his living room.
"Do you hear that?" He demanded triumphantly, shutting the solid oak front door.
"Hear what?" I said.
"Nothing! That's exactly what I mean. You don't hear anything once that door is shut. There's no sound whatsoever. This house is so well built that you don't hear noise when the door is shut."
Assuring him that that was wonderful, I began to shepherd my buyers back outside.
"You don't understand!" he said, positioning himself between us and the door. It's really, really quiet in here. You can sleep without having to worry about being awakened by the noise."
"Uh, okay." I replied, displaying my command of witty repartee. His emphasis on "the noise" was beginning to unnerve me.
"As a matter of fact," he continued, "there's a major accident every single week at the corner down there, and sometimes we don't even hear the sirens."
It was beginning to be perfectly clear to me that if I allowed him to continue in this vein, he was going to jinx the sale.
"Okay, that's fine. I'm sure the buyers appreciate that".
"You know, there are ambulances and police on this corner all the time because of the accidents," he confessed enthusiastically. "And we don't even hear the sirens. That's how well built this house is."
"That's wonderful. Thanks for your time," I responded once again.
He put his hand out, frantic that we were trying again to leave. "No, no, no, you really don't understand," he said. "For example, my son's best friend was killed on our front lawn last year. He was pulling out of our driveway and got T-boned on the main road right out there." He pointed behind him toward the front door. "His car rolled over into our front lawn. We had ambulance, fire trucks, and police in our front lawn with lights going, and sirens flaring, and we didn't hear a thing. That's how incredibly well built this house is."
My buyers and I were flabbergasted. Looking back at Stacey, I saw that her mouth had formed a perfect "O", which was not surprising, given what she had just heard. On the way back to the office, her husband said, "Well, if we purchase the home, we'd have to buy a really big shop vac to suck the blood out of the front yard, won't we?"
It came as no surprise to me when they decided not to make an offer on the house which, eventually, sold for significantly less than the original asking price.
The moral of the story is that sellers have to be really careful about intervening between their realtor and the potential buyer. Of course, no reliable realtors should fail to meet the state's requirement of full disclosure. However it is not necessary to introduce the possibility of offering a property which will give the buyer a front row seat to scenes of horror, featuring gore and dismemberment.
(Excerpt from Loren Keim's Book - "Life Lessons... from the back seat of my car")