Adventures in REO's with Andy

Adventures with Andy

By: Stacy

So it here is the afternoon before 4^th of July and Andy goes “you want to take a ride to go see a couple of properties?”  I’m like okay….I don’t get out of the office much and I always enjoy going to see properties.

We pull up to our first house – a vacant bank owned property, however there is a large truck and airboat sitting in the driveway.  As we go up to open the door and realize we’re not getting in, since we were given a 4 number combo code and it clearly requires a 3 letter combo, the neighbor approaches us with a pitbull with an 8” wide collar, it’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen!.  He asks if we care if his truck and boat are there.  No we answer…not our house.  He does know the code so we are able to check out the house, it was a Wreck!  Andy didn’t even want it, and she’s bought some real junk.  As we drive away Andy informs me this young gentleman was wearing an ankle bracelet provided by our local law enforcement.  Yay.  Well maybe the next one will be better.

So we venture to our 2^nd house and I get out of the car as Andy is finishing up a phone call.  She yells out to see if I see the electronic lock box….no but the front door is open (and all the windows are propped up with sticks).  We go inside to what sounds like a shower running and as Andy steps in to yell out to make sure no one is home, the carpet squishes under her feet.  This may be due to the fact that there is a geiser coming out of the toilet tank.  We can’t get it turned off inside so we ventured outside to see if we could find the shut off valve.  No luck so Andy calls the realtor to give them a heads up.  Going back into the house I notice a purse sitting in the house and as Andy wanders around the rest of the house talking to the realtor, I notice a couple walking across the street to us.  She seems to be ready for bed because of her attire but the beer in her hand threw that theory out the door (and it was only 4pm).  She came up to the door to find out who we were and why we were in the house so we told her.  (Now we do have the other realtor on the line with us just in case).  She commented that she was helping out the owner with the remodel (never really said she was a tenant but was staying there while the work was being done).  Well as we told her about the toilet she goes oh I know and proceed to walk into the bathroom in her fuzzy slippers and said “oh hell no it wasn’t like that a minute ago”  Well actually it had been at least 5 minutes since we were there so I’m thinking she had been across the street longer than a minute.  Might have been the beers.  Messes with your perception of time. We left to venture on to the next house wondering HOW it could get any worse.

The 3^rd house was promising…..no one to greet us and it actually was vacant.  It was a pretty good house other than on a busy street and it was listed as a 2 bath and was actually a bath and a half.  This is frustrating because we never would’ve gone to look at it because it is too hard to sell or rent with only one bath. 

After leaving our last house we remembered we were close to Dairy Queen, this was a plus.  First because it is the beginning of July in Florida and that spells H-O-T plus we felt we deserved a treat after what we just experienced (women can justify anything to get what we want).  It was YUMMY and much deserved don’t you think?

I hope you at least got a smile out of our adventure because if you are a realtor you have either had one of these afternoons of previewing properties or you’ve heard of them, as an investor I know you’ve had these adventures and if you involved in the real estate industry at all, well let’s just say we had a Griswald afternoon.  And any of you that think working in the same office with Andy & Tim is “normal”, you are sadly mistaken.

Have a safe and happy 4^th,    Stacy