The ape was in the bathroom, TP in hand. The errant boa constrictor was back in its cage. And the owners were out in front, flagging down prospective buyers.
Sound like a bad Chevy Chase movie? Not so fast. It’s the land of open houses, where misguided sellers leave precious jewelry on the counters and motorists appear to speed up as they near open house signs.
Well-meaning sellers shadow people room to room, alert for the first sign of a checkbook; and the carpet smells, well, like a dog.
Enough already. A check with Sacramento area Realtors provided a glimpse of what not to do in preparing for an open house.
For openers, apes are out. Realtor Melanie Conover of MacBride Realty Co. made the ape sighting in an open house, with prospective buyers in tow, naturally.
The seller, she recalled, “had this life-sized ape with a roll of toilet paper in his hand sitting on the toilet in the master bath.” The buyers’ group, a colonel’s wife and daughter, came upon the creature from a blind corner.
“The daughter and I both screamed and ran out of the house,” said Conover. When the unflappable colonel’s wife coaxed the women back in, they took a longer look. “It was a good phony,” Conover said. “Fortunately, the colonel wasn’t with us. He was kind of stuffy.”
The boa constrictor, unlike the ape, was alive. Patty Gillette of Century 21 Gillette & Associates remembers how disruptive the house pet was.
Potential buyers “spent all the time talking about the boa constrictor and looking at the boa constrictor, and not looking at the house,” said Gillette.
There were involuntary shivers one day when the owners notified agents to stay away. The critter was out of the cage and could not be found.
Other objectionable notables are those that bark-not the four-legged kind.
Carol Schreiter, vice president of residential marketing for the Roseville-based Coker-Ewing Real Estate Co., says she occasionally sees people outside open houses, trying to encourage people to come in, “like barkers,” she said. “Not necessarily agents, but owners. It’s a real carnival kind of atmosphere.”
This is to be frowned upon. But probably the biggest complaint by agents are sellers who leave their jewelry around the house.
Roberta Donovan of Lyon & Associates in Sacramento remembers sellers who left all their jewelry sitting on the bathroom vanity during the open house. She scooped it up and put it under the sink. She forgot to tell them that’s where it was-until the next day.
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