Real Estate Sunday Funny

NAR asked practitioners for their supernatural real estate stories and got some truly bone-chilling tales from the trenches.

October 2013 | By Meg White      

On Friday, Sept. 13, NAR Director of Social Business Practice Heather Elias asked those following NAR’s Facebook page for “spooky or superstitious real estate stories.” She got more than just a few stories about haunted listings and other strange happenings.

It was a fun thread to follow, but we didn’t want such great stories to disappear like ghosts in the night. So, in preparation for Halloween, we thought you might like to read through some of these narratives. Here are a few that sent tingles down our spines (lightly edited for style, grammar, and length).

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Bernice Ross Contributor

 If you have been in the real estate business for any length of time, sooner or later you will hear about a house that has a scary history. What’s frightening, however, is when you experience it firsthand.

I’ve had my fair share of strange events, including doorbells ringing when there is no one there, unplugged stereos coming on by themselves, and sporadic cigar smoke in a new car where I was the only one who ever drove it. While these events were strange, they pale in comparison to two other events that really did scare me.

When I first started in the business, I had a client who wanted to purchase in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles. Although this area was about 45 minutes from my office, we had MLS access,

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Jim Barnes was new to the real estate business and anxious to succeed. He learned quickly that one of the best ways to meet buyers was to hold open houses. Taking the advice of his broker, he volunteered to hold  listings open for other agents in the office. His offer worked.  A fellow agent had an impromptu invitation to Palm Springs for the weekend, and offered her advertised new listing to Jim for a Sunday open house. He gratefully jumped at the opportunity.

It was late on Sunday morning when Jim planted his borrowed open house signs at neighborhood intersections and in the front yard of the suburban San Diego home.  The owner's Volvo was in the driveway, but when Jim rang the doorbell nobody responded. Unconcerned, Jim retrieved the key

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1014 270th Pl Se in Sammamish, WA on Thursday  October the 31st  “Halloween Night!” 5:30 until 8:30

Nestled deep in the Cascade foothills, hidden far from passing eyes by tall pine and towering rock laid the old cemetery. It was here that the worst of the Pacific Northwest lay buried. They were the robbers, murderers, and worse that no church would allow to be set to rest on their sacred soil. Old stones covered in moss marked their graves, and the black as night crows gathered around the clearing that was their cemetery and sat silent on the branches, watching the graves with their glassy yellow eyes.

 

Then came progress. Roads and highways were built into the mountains, and soon little towns, businesses and residential communities took

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By Erika Riggs | Zillow

 

Edwin Gonzalez’s wife Lillian is the one who fell in love with the home.

“Since she was a little girl, she’s always wanted a Victorian,” he explained. It was Thanksgiving 2008 and Lillian’s sister sent her the Gardner, MA listing. Three days later, Edwin and Lillian went to see the home.

“The minute we walked in, we felt like we were going back in time,” Gonzalez said. “Lillian said, ‘This is mine!’ It was a dream home, really, it’s very charming. It calls you in.”

They bought the home and moved in about six months later. That’s when they started hearing rumors about the stately Victorian. Apparently, their dream home was haunted.

Haunted history

The home is known as “The

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A nightmare on YOUR street: The new site telling people whether someone died in  their 'haunted' home

• DiedInHouse.com uses a multitude of  sources to tell users whether anyone has died in their house
• Thousands of requests have been submitted  since its launch on June 1, with Texas and California proving the most popular  states
• Website has maligned real estate agents,  who say it affects business
• Follows landmark case in which widow  failed to prove she was duped when owners didn't disclose her new house was the  site of a murder-suicide

By  Daily Mail Reporter

It's the website that

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This entry was written by Jon and posted on October 28, 2006 at 7:42 pm and filed under Uncategorized.

It was a dark and stormy…morning.  My third day on the job managing a one bedroom condo, also my very first property management gig.  The owners moved out to Japan, and came to me asking about Property Management.  I told them I’d never done it before, but it’s just a one bedroom condo, how hard could it be?

I got the contract, and we set up the appropriate accounts.  They left for Japan, and I found a nice young recently married couple to rent the place.  So a small condo, in a professionally managed association, the place was rented, and I was on easy street.

So before the tenants moved in, I wanted to have the place professionally

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By Dan Devine 17 hours ago Ball Don't Lie    .

I will give you three guesses whose house lies behind this gate. (Photo via Baird and Warner)

First, it was going to cost you $29 million. Then, it was $21 million. Now, if you want to buy the three-level, 56,000-square-foot compound in which Michael

Well, that's all you'll need to get started, at least. See, the palatial estate's headed for auction on Nov. 22, and a $250,000 deposit is required to bid, according to Lauren Schuker Blum of the Wall Street Journal:

The 7.39-acre property is in Highland Park, a suburb 30 minutes north of Chicago. The contemporary-style home has nine bedrooms and 19 bathrooms. According to [New York-based Concierge Auctions], it also has a three-bedroom

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By Ramit Plushnick-Masti, Associated Press  
House of cans: 1 man's quest to throw nothing away, even beer cans, becomes Houston landmark

HOUSTON (AP) -- A child of the Great Depression, John Milkovisch didn't throw anything away — not even the empty cans of beer he enjoyed each afternoon with his wife.

So, in the early 1970s when aluminum siding on houses was all the rage, he lugged down the cans he had stored in his attic for years, painstakingly cut open and flattened each one and began to wallpaper his home. 

"The funny thing is that it wasn't ... to attract attention," said Ruben Guevara, head of restoration and preservation of the Beer Can House in Houston's Memorial Park area. "He said himself

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Daily Real Estate News | Thursday, August 01, 2013

Want your online listing description to get more attention? Try something like this: "You are humbled, like what happens when we stare out to sea & feel small. ... Wait a minute! Is that a family room off the kitchen? Toss me a Pop-Tart Mom!!!!"

That eloquent — if not enigmatic — description is an example of the work of Washington, D.C., real estate agent Tom Faison. He says agents need to use online listing descriptions to sell an experience as well as a home. Faison said he prefers to use vague, confusing, and even ridiculous descriptions to make buyers curious about the listing, rather than simply list the home's features.

Dying for another one

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