All Quiet on the Realty Front

John Hepburn

Description

A collection of short stories, all real estate related, some sad, some humorous, some food for thought. Initially written as a promotional, closing or a client gift from a real estate professional to their client, it was expanded due to reader request to be offered to the general reading public as a "fun" read, and labeled by more than one as a great "bathroom" read!

Sujets

• Employabilité, métiers et formations
• Humour

Informations

• Publié par: First Edition Design Publishing
• Date de parution: 03 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781937520632
• Langue: English

Extrait

All Quiet on the Realty Front
A Collection of Real Estate Inspired Stories

By

John Hepburn
Copyright © 2012 by John Hepburn


ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

ISBN 978-1-937520-63-2
Published by First Edition Design eBook Publishing
February 2012
www.firsteditiondesignpublishing.com


No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher.
Preface
The author spent a 30 plus year career on the “fringe” of the real estate market in and around Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Changing only the names of the individuals, not the details, in a sincere attempt to spare any possible embarrassment, ill feelings, and perhaps lawsuits. Here is a compilation of those years in a collection of seventeen short stories or vignettes. Some certainly are sad, some hopefully humorous, and finally, some quite humbling. Any similarity to any individual is purely by coincidence.
Author Profile
Born 1952 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Resides in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania/Sarasota, Florida
Licensed Real Estate Agent Pennsylvania since 1974
BS Degree in Marketing at Robert Morris College 1977
Founder Property Management Co. 1978
Acknowledgements
Edited by Kathy MacLean... Santa Cruz, C.A.
Cover design by Joy Freeman of Outrageous Designs … [e-mail]

Author can be reached at:
[e-mail]
Table of Contents

Dumpster Diving
Troll on the Patio
Take this Sign and Shove It
A Sad Ballerina
Riding Academy
Where there’s Smoke…there’s Fire
This Call May be Recorded
Profiling
A Hard Dose of Life’s Realities
Blondes Really do have More Fun
The Secret Door
No Exterminator Needed
Not Making the Grade
My Friend Flicka
Show Me the Money
Let’s Play Ball
Bad Bad LeRoy Brown
Dumpster Diving



As a newly licensed real estate agent in the mid- seventies, I was very happy to place my license in the commercial division of a large, tremendously successful, family owned real estate company. Knowing absolutely nothing as to how the real estate industry functioned, an agent, who shall be known as Ernie, recognized this rather glaring flaw, and took me under his wing so to speak. Ernie would let me tag along on some appointments, let me sit in his presence while he was on the phone, perhaps gleaning some small tidbit as to how to speak the lingo, and in general show me the ropes. Looking back years later, I am still appreciative of his taking the “new kid on the block” under his wing, and easing me into the workday world of real estate, or at least, my interpretation of it.
One of my faults, among many, is that the grass always looks greener, so I left soon after that, and started my own small firm, (very small)! The real estate business, while highly competitive in nature, still recognizes that agents need to work together for the common good of a commission. Lots of phone calls back and forth between agents of same and other times competing firms, schmoozing, socializing, and sometimes actually talking business. During the course of the former, I inquired as to Ernie’s whereabouts with an agent from my former office, as I had not seen or heard anything lately from Ernie, only to be ridiculed that I must be the last person on the face of the earth to know that Ernie was recently banished from his former office for less than honorable tactics. I was absolutely horrified. How could an agent who year after year, selling millions of dollars of real estate, be banished? What could he possibly have done, I wondered to myself? Turns out, Ernie was burning the midnight oil. It seems, after everyone had left the office for the day, and before the late night cleaning crew would arrive, he would quietly come back to the office and scrutinize all the other agent’s wastebaskets for thrown out memos, messages, and “while you were out” phone logs, in search of any hastily scribbled notes, any meaningful correspondence that may have been discarded. This information would now alert him to a potential property that someone was thinking of selling, names of potential buyers that were responding to a sale advertisement, and any other tidbit that might be useful down the road. In other words, Ernie was dumpster diving!
While recognizing that Ernie was only attempting to gain a competitive edge, management banished Ernie nonetheless to a small administrative office in downtown Pittsburgh, where he would have access to only a multi-list computer, but where he would not be around any other agents and their trash cans. Perhaps Ernie was just a natural born salesman, good at what he does, and didn’t really need to gain the competitive edge by going through other people’s trash. Then again, I remember Ernie being very adept in the workings of a computer. A skeptical person might simply surmise that he has found a way to “hack” into other agent’s E-mails and websites.
As of this writing, I do know that Ernie continues to ply his trade, selling millions of dollars of real estate annually, while I continue to “hack” away at writing a book. Suffice it to say, Ernie enjoys a far greater cash flow!
Troll on the Patio



Certainly as a novice to the entire rental process, and probably having only a few successful lease transactions under my belt, I knew that the situation at hand was strange to say the least. I had been instructed by our office to meet a gentleman at one of our buildings in Shadyside, an east end community of Pittsburgh, and show him one of our garden style apartments. The apartment was not for him, but rather for an older woman whom he represented in his capacity as a family law attorney.
Our office consisted at the time of three equity partners, two of them substantial, me not so much, but anxious and eager to learn. Being the youngest by some 30 odd years, and initially responsible for most of the maintenance at our buildings, I was slowly being given more and more responsibilities on the rental end.
Arriving at the building at the appointed time, I found the gentleman who I had been requested to meet. He took only a few cursory glances at the apartment, and proclaimed it just perfect for his client. Oddly, he had not been interested in seeing the laundry, storage, or patio area as most people certainly were. He went on to elaborate that he would fill out the necessary application on the spot, and pay the needed deposit in cash immediately. He said that since his client was quite well off financially that a trust fund had been created years ago, and would be responsible for the monthly rental payments. It all seemed quite odd to me, but knowing the office was privy to all this and still set up the appointment, everything was obviously a go. Evidently, there were a few questions of concern the office had, but after speaking with someone in the trust department, the gray areas were turned to green.
Shortly thereafter, Kathleen arrived at our building via a taxi cab. I remember being initially taken aback by her appearance. Shabbily dressed, unkempt hair and an overall messy appearance struck me right off as strange. Perhaps she had been simply travelling for some time to get there, and I probably looked a bit disheveled myself due to my general maintenance duties, and the clothes that I typically wore while performing them. After unloading a number of suitcases from the trunk of the cab, I vividly remember the cab driver placing all of her suitcases on the curb, and mumbling something along the lines of “lot’s of luck”, and drove off. As I helped Kathleen carry everything up to her apartment, she had volunteered that her things would be arriving shortly and I took that to mean her furniture, I then gave her the apartment keys and left.
Well, within a few hours, the office started getting phone calls from other tenants in the building reporting that loud banging and a heated verbal exchange was going on in Kathleen’s apartment, and I was sent immediately to the building to find out what was going on. Pulling in to a small visitor and delivery area that we maintained at the building, yet the farthest point possible from Kathleen’s apartment, I could hear the loud banging and a shrill voice clearly yelling in anguish or distress. Immediately upon knocking at her door, all the noise stopped and Kathleen answered and she greeted me quite civilly. I asked her diplomatically what was going on, “Oh,” she said, “it must have been the TV.” Having just helped her move in with her suitcases not an hour or two ago, I knew this was not the case, and realized that something was terribly wrong. Later that same day in the early evening, I got a couple of calls at home from tenants who expressed the same complaints as the office had received earlier in the day. I told them that we would handle the problem in the morning, but if it became intolerable, simply call the police and they would respond. Maybe that would be the way to handle this after all I mused to myself.
The next morning, while at the office early by myself, awaiting the two senior partners, I was mulling over what to tell them about this entire situation, when the office phone rang. It was a tenant of ours at the building who had been leaving for work, and as was her custom, she was walking to her car in an outside parking area directly behind the patio. The patio was cordoned off with all of the building’s patio furniture placed as a barricade, and an elderly woman insisted that there was a $1.00 fee assessed for crossing the patio.
Within a few minutes, the first of the senior partners arrived, listened briefly to this tale of woe that I relayed to him, and said, “Come on, let’s go down there right now.