Spooky Halloween Series - Spooky Transactions, Episode 3

In this episode, the hosts share their experiences with spooky transactions in real estate, discussing personal stories that highlight the challenges and unexpected situations that can arise during property deals. From dealing with incompetent sellers to navigating bizarre incidents, they provide insights into the complexities of the real estate market while maintaining a light-hearted tone, and don't miss the murder room!

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Transcript

Welcome back to The House Next Door. Yes, welcome back. And this is our final spooky episode. That means Halloween's right around corner. That means Halloween's right around the corner. you whose birthday it is? Whose? Mine. Yours! Yay! You're Scorpio. I am. You've got a stinger. Yeah.

Didn't you know that? I did, you know, because I remember talking about because my son is a Scorpio too. His birthday is on the 28th. When is yours? The 31st. The 31st. Oh, you're a true Halloween baby. I don't remember you. I was talking about that. Yeah. So we got to celebrate your birthday. Yes. Oh, I'm excited. don't know what I'm doing. I know. When you're close to 30.

What do they call that? Dirty 30? Is that what they Dirty 30, yeah. Yeah. So why do they call it dirty 30? Because your 20s are actually... I would say your 20s might be dirtier. I never understood dirty 30. I like, didn't get it. And I'm like, why is 30 dirty? That's, yeah. We should chat GPT. Why is it? can't say chat GPT. I can't say chat GPT. That's how old I am. I can't pronounce it. Yeah. What is 40?

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40 is nothing. Over the hill? Stop it. 50 is nifty 50. Well, is 40 over the hill? No. Well, mean, technically, back in the day, they would say 40 was over the hill. But now 40 is like the new dirty 30.

My generation they're just yeah, I mean I feel like people are getting younger and younger for each age Yeah, my grandpa's like 86 86. Yeah, think yeah. Yeah So young

He's a young 86. He has a girlfriend, right? A lady friend. A lady friend. A lady friend. I love that. Well, and I feel like when you look at people, like you see it all the time on Instagram. I don't know how old she is, but she's very active. She's in her late 70s and she's, you would never know it. But you know when they show how old the golden girls were really, and then you compare, like they'll show a picture of Jennifer Aniston or something and it's like, it feels like people now.

look so much younger when they're older. botox. It is. was gonna say we probably have better diets, botox. Better diets, not me. Yeah, I know. We talked about that. need to some chocolate, the pumpkin chocolates. Okay, so what But you have the pumpkin chocolates. Oh, yes. So I had these beautiful, wonderful pumpkin chocolates because I am all about the seasons. My whole life is set by the seasons. And fall is one of my favorite. And I had these beautiful Lindor pumpkin spice limited edition chocolates.

They sell out of the store really quick. And so when I get them, I like hoard them. And I had them in this pretty little bowl on my counter and I have Newfoundland dogs. Rumi is 150 pounds-ish. They look like little grizzly bears. I live with little bears. And Bevo, he's more like 120-ish. And we came home from dinner. We were podcasting. And we came home from dinner and the bowl was on the ground. There wasn't a wrapper in sight. All the...

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beautiful little Lindor chocolates were gone and they were just looking at me. they're so good. And they were so good and they ate them Did they get sick from it? No. No. Those things can eat anything. They ate a bottle of Tums. They didn't get sick. They ate a box of Dramamine. They didn't get sick. They did eat cough drops and I was really worried because that can cause their heart to stop. But no, they ate them and they were just stuck in their tail. chocolate's bad for dogs too, right? Oh, they ate a whole thing of Baker's unsweetened chocolate.

Cocoa, when we first moved in, they broke into, we have barn doors on our pantry and they know how to get in. So when we first moved in, we didn't have a secure thing yet. They broke in, they ate a box of unsweetened cocoa. Then they were thirsty and went and drank out of the toilets. And so when we came home, it looked like somebody had the worst case of diarrhea because they slobbered brown chocolate all over the toilet bowl. It was awful.

So yeah, those did you take any pictures of it? No, I should have. But those would have been going through your pictures. People would be like, what happened at your house? Colonoscopy prep much? So those Lindor chocolates, that was nothing. That was like a park, like a walk in the park for them. I don't even found the wrappers yet. Yeah, I'm sure they're out in the backyard. That's OK. One more thing before we get started. That's the weirdest thing. Their poop is never in the backyard anymore.

I don't know where it goes. It's the turkeys. Do you think it's the turkeys? turkeys are eating it. Something is eating my dog's poop. I use Do you think our listeners want to listen to this? I think so. I don't know what it is. But I go out We just lost 50,000 followers. Well, five. We only had five to start with. I don't know what it is, but I go to pick up the poop because you got to pick up your dog poop, especially when you live with bears. And I go out there and I'm like, Craig. I've never seen any. I don't know what the dog... I roll around in the yard, but... There's no dog poop out there. Something gets in our yard and...

eats all the dog poop. Interesting. I have no idea what it is. Could it be deer? I don't. Would a deer eat dog poop? don't. I'm telling you, the turkeys. It could be the turkeys. that stuff off my car. Well, yeah. All right, let's get on to our topic today, which is a spooky topic, the final spooky topic. And we're talking about spooky transactions and deals and, you know, basically nightmare situations that we had. And by that, we mean more

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Keep us on our toes. Stressful than actually spooky. No seances or ghosts. We've already been through that. In this particular episode, right? Yeah. So we have a treasure trove, like I said, of these. We have great transactions that happen. I love those. Those are really our job is very boring. We facilitate a buyer and a seller in a transaction. mine lately has been. No, it has not. It has not been.

boring for the since 2020. True. But in the true form of real estate, real estate should be a pretty boring situation. Yeah. But it just hasn't been. And we have those wonderful deals that go every the parties are all getting along. Everybody's negotiating. Everybody's giving, taking. It's all working. And then you have the ones where nothing is working and everybody's everybody's taking.

No one's giving. there's all kinds of crazy things. So those are the deals we're talking about today. So do you want to start, Anthony? Well, I guess so, because I just went through mine. Yeah, you just recently had a very big, transaction, so to speak. Yeah, it was a very stressful, still is, transaction. And we're not closed yet.

So my mother, she's a realtor. I love that this was with your mother. She was the other realtor on the other end. You know, we got to go in it together. She represented the seller. I represented the buyer. And by the way, we're at two different brokerages. And so she got a phone call for an individual that wanted to buy her listing or wanted to see her listing.

But he needed to sell his house to buy her listing. And so I went and showed him her listing. He wanted it. So we listed his house. We got it under contract fairly quickly. And pretty much where we were in negotiating was just trading houses. He made a little bit, but not much. And this is in a very small town, again, in Texas. And that's the fun thing about Anthony and I. We work in Austin and Round Rock.

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you know, Cedar Park and all that. But we also work in really small towns surrounding the Austin metro area. not a lot of agents do that. I was going to say, it takes a special agent to work in these small towns. takes a special agent who, one, knows the area well enough and kind of knows these weird situations that come up.

But Anthony and I are two agents that go out to LaGrange and Smithville. Lexington. Lexington's a little far. It's not my typical. Typical, right? Martindale. Martindale. Copeland. Lockhart. LaGrange or Lockhart. know, I've had a lot out in Copeland lately. Yeah. I put an offer in last week on a house out in Bartlett's out there. There's a lot of cool little.

towns, especially if you have clients that like unique or historic properties, you gotta kinda go out on the fringes. But you also, can't just go out and not know what you're doing. You have to do your research and you have to be familiar with these areas in order to another big one lately is Temple. Temple, And I feel like it's growing, but that's one that it's very localized. You gotta know. You really have to know Temple. that's where I almost bought that. I put that offer in on that historic home. That since it's Halloween,

It was straight up haunted. It did have a murder room. It did. know we're not. Let's go into it. OK, so well, I loved this house. We had an offer him. We it was contingent on us selling our house and our house wasn't even on the market yet. Yet that's what a realtor does. They put an offer that's contingent on a house. Tell your client not to do without my house even being on the market. Yeah, exactly. And so.

It was the inspection and all this stuff. And on top of it, the house had no operable plumbing and it also had nob and tube wiring. So everything had to be redone. We're talking about 120 K just to be able to flush the toilet and flip a light switch so the house doesn't go up in flames. Just starting. Don't even get me started on the windows. So we're upstairs.

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And you know what, like a corky house. huh, yep. We're upstairs and this room was gonna be my office. And I noticed, now that I was spending more time in the house, there were all like these knife marks. What? In the walls, in the wallpaper, slashes. Like full on knife slashes, right? Did you run? No, I had an offer and I love this house. And I was already starting to kind of get the creep vibe in it, but I was not.

admitting that to myself. Did Craig feel it? Well, and then I noticed, said, Craig, do you see, does that look like blood? And in some of the slashes, there was red, brown, oxidized ooze. then he's like, yeah, and look. And then we started following it and it was like on the frame of the door. And it just like spots, know, not like massive blood because we would have noticed that.

And with the pattern of the wallpaper, you really couldn't tell that there were slashes until you're standing in the room for an hour, looking around. And it's gonna be your office. It was gonna be my office. Perfect for real estate. Murder room. And so we had a local designer. So he lived in the historic neighborhood, him and his wife, wonderful people. And they're kind of like the Chip and Joanna of Temple. And they lived in old houses, they renovated them.

his wife actually went to school with the family's son who owned the house. And he was now the seller. And she's like, I dated him in high school and I actually had sex in your house, Barbara. TMI, TMI. so anyway, so I asked him, I'm like, is this the murder room? I mean, look at this. And he would not, he wouldn't answer me. He's like, oh, and he was filming because we were,

talking about what we wanted to do in each room. And so he was taking photo, like filming, talking so he didn't have to take notes. And he stopped filming. He's like, I don't want that on camera. And I said, why? And he's like, well, you just, don't want to stigmatize a house. And I'm like, something is up because his whole demeanor changed. never, I sleuthed. I went through everything to try to find out, but the deal fell through because well. It took 120,000.

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Yeah, mean, the plumbing was shot, the electrical was shot, and we were willing to do it, but they had to negotiate. Like that didn't scare us. had that there was stab marks with, you know, even the stab marks didn't scare me because those bathrooms were original 1940s. You might get murdered and I can. There might be a ghost, but I can overlook all of that for original tile from the 1920s. I think you could go to Round Top and find that. So.

I tried, but afterwards, and I'm friends with them now, the designers, because I looked at other houses in Temple and ended up coming down to Smithville instead. But- You could turn non-historical. In the non-historical. But they said afterwards, they're like, Barb, we are so glad you didn't buy that house. There was a lot that happened in that house and just a lot of trauma. And they said the grandparents who owned it were very sweet, kind people, but the father-

He had some issues, the sons had some issues. And so it could have been, I don't think anybody was murdered, but it might've been like a rage. Might've been a raging, like I'm just gonna go rage and cut my hand and then, know, I don't know. I didn't buy it, so it's good. Anyway, I'm sorry I totally hijacked your story about your transaction, talking about Temple. Let's get back on track.

Because we're talking about how I am all over the place today. just talking about small towns because this particular transaction room with your mom is in Lexington Which is a small town that probably 80 % of the realtors don't even know where that is I didn't until you told me yeah, so So we We had it under contract. I sold his house. We had it under contract He put an offer or contract in on her house

And so we were, everything was good. Then the seller of the house that he was buying wanted, was trying to work out some financial stuff. And so we postponed closing by 10 days, I think. But, you know, he still sold his house on time and there was temporary lease backs where they could stay in the house. And so, so we were supposed to close on it on Friday, last Friday.

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We were actually filming podcasts. Right, we were doing some film. I remember that. Yeah, and so I get a phone call, our closing is at four o'clock. My buyer already signed. Get a phone call at four o'clock saying that the title company is refusing the file. Because? The seller is quote unquote incompetent. And this is determined by the title company. Yeah. Based on what? That she's older?

I wasn't there. You weren't there. But I have no idea. So something happened where they just decided that she wasn't mentally sound. Yeah. So it blew up at the closing table. We first time ever. Why did your mom's client? Your mom's going to know if she's mentally sound, right? Well, not always. Never mind. She's not going to know that. We've all talked to her. I've been out there. I've talked to her. The title companies talk to her. Mom's talked to her. We've never felt like she was unsound.

Right. Until the title company just deemed it. Yes. And stopped it. Yeah. So it blew up at the closing table. And so I told my buyer, was like, well, we need to go find you a place because you're going to be homeless in three weeks. Yeah, because his house sold and he's got to move out. Yeah. And he wants to stay in Lexington. Yes. And what are their

Like two properties for sale? There's like five, but there's about 10, but you know, half of them are overpriced. So I go show him one property. There's one property that checks his boxes and it's listed a little high. So I don't know if we can get down to it. And so I go show him and he really likes it. So this is Saturday morning. He really likes it. He likes it better than the house he was buying, which is good.

That's a positive. Yep. And so I told him, I was like, well, let's do a verbal offer so that we, because I don't know what's happening with the other one. I don't know if we're technically under contract. I don't know. It's on pause because. closing date was Friday, but it didn't close. but now we've got an incompetent seller, so we just don't know where it's in limbo. Yeah. So I told him, let's go find you a place so that we have a backup. And so Monday morning comes and he doesn't want to continue on the purchase of that home.

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So that incompetent yes seller home. Okay, and So we we scrapped that deal and we move forward with the other one. So we're verbally negotiating We come to terms I send out the offer we get it signed send it over to the agent I didn't hear from him for a day Which he was usually pretty good at responding. So the next morning I'm driving to showing and I think it was the daughter or

The sister of the realtor, the listing agent, calls me and she says, hey, so and so, the realtor, had a stroke last night and he's not able to communicate right now. my gosh. And so I was like, that's not good at all. my gosh, the other deal, the seller's incompetent scrapped. And then this new property, the listing agent is in the hospital. Yeah.

And can't talk. Yeah. This is a spooky transaction. And everybody's still greed, you know, and so luckily his brother's a realtor at the same brokerage. so he calls me and he's like, let's figure this out. We need it. And so he gets it signed. We got it signed today. But I was like out of all transactions and you know, it's a small transaction with sales price and we've all worked super hard on it. hopefully we'll get to close.

Oh my God! You're a poor client. That's nuts. And he's been a trooper. He really has. And he's excited. He's excited for this new one. He likes it better. I think it's a better fit for him. everything happens for a reason. And I tell them, my clients that all the time. They get so disappointed when something falls through. And I say, just trust in this process.

There is a process and there is a plan. And when one door closes, absolutely I know as cliche as it sounds, another one does open. With a super key. With a super key. And every time that has happened to one of my clients, it has ended up that they are- It's always better. It's always a better place. And same with, and probably with you as well, like me personally, with my house, we went through a couple of houses before I bought and it just worked out. It does.

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We were on our way out of town and bought it sight unseen. Yeah. Well, we had an option period. So I'm not advocating against buying a house that's sight unseen. yeah, we do crazy things as a relative. We tell clients to do one thing and we go do the other. Well, we do the worst. I've got so many, you know, when we were talking about this topic, what are we going to talk about? And I was telling Anthony, it's like, I drew a blank because I have over what?

11 years of transactions and so many of them are challenging and we're just immune to them now. And I feel like I've just forgotten, like I blocked a lot of them and even like recent transactions, I'm like, I don't remember that one. But there's a few that stand out in my mind for sure. And one of them, I touched on it in a previous episode and it was about

a septic tank on an extension of a home. And so it was this really cool. was early on in my career. I think that's where like most of my stories come from, because just the craziest stuff happened to me early on. you're taking every listing, every buyer. You are. And you're hanging on to everything. so this is really cool house and it's on acreage and round rock, like off of Redbud Lane area. And it was owned by the

The daughter was the agent's, the list agent's daughter owned the home. And they did a full renovation, add on, all this stuff. The home was a little bit older. And it was a beautiful renovation. It looked great. Problem was when they did the addition, they put the septic tank, they put the addition on the septic tank. You can't do that. That is a no-no. Well, and you're supposed to pump them once a year. Yeah, and you can't get to pump it.

because it's covered up. With a slab? Yes. And tanks are just plastic. Exactly. And so what we started to notice, because we're there and we're trying to figure out where's the septic, how could you cannot pump the septic tank. You can't get to the septic tank. And when we noticed that the addition was sinking, like.

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We didn't, again, things you see when you're in the house a little bit longer and you're doing the inspection and you think, that maybe this is natural settling. We'll see when we're in the inspection and hang on.

These animals. Hey, he didn't call the door.

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You

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Yeah.

Who was it? It wasn't Beavs, right? was... Tim! Okay, now you gotta go sit down. Go lay down. You guys were in the middle of something.

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Okay back to I think it was sinking yeah

Your hair. thank you.

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So the septic tank, okay, so the room was sinking down. You could see it pulling away from the windows and the floor and it was this, so the whole addition was starting to collapse into the septic tank. Well, that's a crappy situation. That is a situation. Here's the crappier situation. My clients put in an offer, right? They paid for an inspection.

They paid for a septic inspection and you can't even get to the septic. And we couldn't even get to it. They put their earnest money in. They put their option fee into there. They're in, you know, at least a thousand dollars out of pocket on this house because of inspections and things. And so we clearly the sellers knew this because they're the ones who did the renovation and the sellers. I mean, the listing agent.

knows that this is a violation and that you have to disclose this. One, they don't disclose it at all. And so they shouldn't, they had no business selling that house. And the fact that they didn't disclose it, if we had known that you can't access the septic tank and that the extension Because it's underneath that. Yeah, and that they built an extension on the septic tank, we would have never considered this Well, the county won't allow that either. No.

And my clients wouldn't be out a whole inspection. They wouldn't be out their option fee. So that was what we did. We pushed hard and I, we were able to get their option fee back and they paid for their inspection. And I pushed so hard. I was such an advocate for that. And I really drove the point home of this was irresponsible of you as sellers. You knew this and didn't disclose this. That you are not being.

You're not being ethical and you're a realtor. You're taking people's money knowingly and putting them in this situation where they're falling in love with a house, giving you option fees. And you're just like, what, collecting option fees because the house can't, they pulled the house off the market. Yeah, they did. And I was like, good. That is, that was the right thing to do. know, that takes me back to when I first got to Realty Austin, literally I'm in onboarding when we had to go through like an eight hour thing for two,

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or three days. In the meantime, I had a transaction where I had a great buyer. It was an older 70s home in East Austin. that's a spooky one too. Do we have time? We have like, we have about five minutes. Okay, wrap it up. Take us home, Anthony. So I'll finish this story and then I'll go to that one. So he bought a house in East Austin and we were under contract in one of the electric, the sub panel.

was replaced. Well, during our inspection, the main panel was not. So what we found out was there was another real estate company that was going to take the listing, but we assumed that they were making them change the panels before they took the listing because it was a fire hazard. And it was a union- Pacific standard? And so they replaced the sub-panel, but not the main panel. And then another realtor got it because the other brokerage would not take it. And so we went under contract.

got an inspection and then my client got an electrical inspection because of the box and it was a thousand dollars for that inspection. And there were two hot spots on the box that were very likely of catching on fire. And we got a quote and you know, report from the electrician. So my guy, we tried to negotiate for a new panel, which was $8,000 and the seller would not budge.

They don't. It's crazy. They don't budge on that. And I told him, I told the listing agent, I said, this is going to be a problem with 99 % of the buyers and you're going to lose a buyer in this market because you're not willing to give $8,000 to get a panel. And it's a safety hazard. This is in this market. This isn't in a 2021 market. And, um, and so, and it's already close to being on fire, you know, there's two hotspots already on it. And so we backed out and

I fought for his option fee and he's like, well, I'm just going to sue them. And okay. Well, there's always that. And so the next, and I'm in New York city. already showed him the house. I wrote it up when I was in New York. I was on our onboarding via zoom. Right. And, you know, I'm having a great time at a pub, putting out fires literally. And so the, the listing agent, calls me back the next day. She said, Anthony, will he.

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My guy's willing to do it. And I said, well, I don't know if my guy is willing to, know, that ship already sailed. We were undercon... We were 10 days... Well, we had a fast closing. And we were already through underwriting and everything. And I was like, let me call him. And he's like, well, I'll take it. But they need to come down an extra thousand dollars to pay for my inspection. And I called the listing agent. I said, hey, he's willing to take it. But you all need to come down another thousand to pay for the inspection. She said, OK, no deal or no problem. That's a deal.

without like she knew from her clients already that they were going to do it. Yeah. And that shows sellers if you're greedy, you lose more. Yeah, that's true. But the other thing about what makes it spooky. Yeah. So we've got like three minutes. OK. So whenever I was looking for a house for him, we we looked at a bunch in Southeast Austin and I get I get to the listings early typically and I drive around I get there really early and I thought it was tenet.

occupied or owner occupied because that's what the instructions said. So I waited until like five minutes before, but I drove around and I see a whole bunch of cops and the cul-de-sac that's right behind his house. And they have AK-47s or the big guns. What? Yes. And they have this house surrounded and they have the SWAT team out there and they have... What? And this is, your showing is on the other like... Yeah, their backyard. This is the backyard of the house you're going to show? all I hear is...

So and so, you have a warrant for your arrest, you are surrounded by police, come out with your hands up. my gosh. And so I'm like, what am I going to do? So, and my guy drives this brand new, beautiful blue Tesla. He's just pulling up. So they get there and I said, which way did y'all come? And he's like, I came that way. And I was like, well, did you see all the police? And he's like, no.

was like, well, there's a SWAT standoff in the backyard. Is that a deal breaker? So then the agent asked me for feedback and I was like, well, it would have been good except there was a SWAT standoff in the backyard. Not a good look. What did she say? Nothing. She's like, thank you for the feedback. So I forgot about that one. My clients loved it. They thought it was entertaining and they even went out into the backyard.

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to go see what was happening. I was like, y'all might get shot. Like you should probably come inside. Were they considering it or was No, no. No, not at all. They thought it was cool though. Anthony has such good stories. I'm telling you, he's got the best. Yeah, so they did not buy the standoff chance. Yeah, SWAT standoff. That's something else. Now you know why I had to tell the story. Like what you were saying earlier is you forget about them because- You do.

We don't get immune to them. You get immune to them. Like you don't even think that's a big deal anymore. prepped up and we won't even talk about it because that one was the better one. That was a better one. I I've had ones where there was one where there and we'll wrap up. We have a code word for wrapping up and it's time. But there was a snake aquarium in the living room. That was like the main feature of the living room. pretty spooky. was a big old snake aquarium. And then there were like, you know, other snake aquariums, know, bordering.

as furniture. What were the showing instructions? Well, it wasn't showing. It was a listing I was going to take on. I didn't take it So were you the snake girl? Because there was so much going on in that. So you didn't get that listing? No, I didn't take that listing. That was one I opted out of.

Well, thank you so much for joining us. I hope this brought y'all a chuckle. Yeah, I hope it brought you a chuckle and the conclusion of our spooky series. there's more to come. It's like the Addams Family. Yeah, Addams Family. I hope everybody has a great Halloween and we'll see you next time.