A Dumpster Is Cheaper Than Selling The House
March 18th, 2007 Staging and Clutter
Agent: “so why do you want to move?”
Mr Clutter: “we need more space”.
Agent: “I see”.
Mrs Clutter: “we have three kids so we need another bedroom”.
Agent: “Isn’t this a four bedroom house?”
Mr Clutter: “Well I use one of the bedrooms for my collection of dried insects and National Geographic magazines”.
Agent: “I see”, looks around, “what is this room exactly? Is it a dining room or a family room?”
Mrs Clutter: “ah the family room I think. We eat out a lot”.
Agent: “is that a turtle?”
Mr Clutter: “whoops sorry about that, he chews through the cardboard once in a while”.
Agent: “I see”.
Mrs Clutter: “would you like to stay for dinner?”
Agent: …
March 19th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
Very funny. I have a mental picture of the front of their refrigerator. Covered with refrigerator magnets and art, right?
March 19th, 2007 at 3:50 pm
I hope this isn’t a true story. LOL
FYI, you have been blessed by the ninja master at the Carnival. Check it out over at Real Opinionated.
March 19th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
Ha - so true! Imagine the money they’d save if they just donated the clutter and lived more simply.
March 19th, 2007 at 7:11 pm
OK, I feel better now. Even my house is not this bad, although my playroom closet photo in my post “Mess” might make you think otherwise!
March 20th, 2007 at 3:03 am
Of course it is true. I’ve seen their refrigerator. Little Billies last 3 report cards are on it, along with magnets from every state the family has ever visited.
March 20th, 2007 at 5:50 am
Ok I have to come clean.
No this story is not true in the sense I was at a listing appointment and a turtle was crawling across the floor of the room of questionable usage.
It is true in the sense that stuff this bad is out there and I’ve seen it. For instance my kids and I came out of Burger King one night and the station wagon parked next to us had trash piled up in the back seat and back of the car up to the roof, up to about shoulder level in the passenger seat and about 6 inches high across the dashboard. I snapped it with my camera phone and wrote a post about it.
I didn’t publish it though. I just didn’t feel right about it. Though I did decide to bring clutter etc into my sphere of topics after that.
March 20th, 2007 at 8:29 am
I have a real clutter story but I’m scared almost too put it into words. I’m talking a dark and dank living area (someone IS living there even though I wouldn’t really call it a living space). First time in my life I was a bit fearful walking through a prospects place.
The ceiling is falling in — in most of the rooms, I kid you not. There were stacks of… whatever stacked in every… room (if you want to call them rooms).
And just for a second I thought I heard dueling banjo’s playing softly in the background. Heck, there was even a so called room that was off limits to me. The prospect went so far as to put a book case and a dresser in front of the so called entry into that room (with a tattered blanket behind the obstacles).
You know what though, the owner of this place has two very marketable land parcels that are worth big bucks. So he is now my client… for those parcels.
When he asked me to list the place I just described above, I flat out told him that I am not putting up one of my for sale signs on that property… ever. He still listed his land parcels with me though.
Clutter is not the right word. I’d take the situation you mentioned above all day long compared to what I witnessed earlier this month.
BTW, I updated my blog roll to include your new blog. Should I delete the other link??
March 20th, 2007 at 11:38 am
In all seriousiness Todd the best possible outcome for me is to write a post saying “Athol was posting at The Real Estate Guide and now at REagent in Connecticut and it is just great” linking to both and change the blogroll.
The Guide is still pulling much higher traffic than here, if I can keep it intact for SEO purposes as much as possible thats good, but all in all here is the new platform.
As to clutter issues. Yeah there are some that are beyond clutter and into hoarding which is now an official diagnosis. Thats a harder issue to crack than just handing out cardboard boxes and saying “let’s get busy”.
March 27th, 2007 at 6:17 am
Congratulations on winning the Consumer-Focused Real Estate Carnival (http://mortgagesundressed.com/2007/03/27/the-carnival-and-an-olympics-theme/)
And this is a great post!
March 27th, 2007 at 7:26 am
[...] Gold went to Athol Kay, whose slick and shiny, newly re-designed (and FINALLY converted to Wordpress) blog muses about a home that really needs a dumpster…and, I might add, a good stager. [...]
March 27th, 2007 at 7:46 am
[...] Athol Kay: “A Dumpster Is Cheaper Than Selling The House.” [...]
March 27th, 2007 at 12:16 pm
[...] This week, 1SiliconValley.com has the honor of hosting the Carnival. Past winners have ranged from the humorous A Dumpster Is Cheaper Than Selling the House to the practical Influencing Real Estate Appraisal and the informative What Can a Stager Do for Me. [...]
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[...] My winning post was A Dumpster is Cheaper Than Selling Your House. I wish I knew why posts that take 15 minutes to write do better than posts that take 2 hours to write. [...]
March 27th, 2007 at 7:27 pm
[...] My winning post was A Dumpster is Cheaper Than Selling Your House. I wish I knew why posts that take 15 minutes to write do better than posts that take 2 hours to write. [...]
March 27th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
[...] A Dumpster Is Cheaper Than Selling The House [REagent in Conneticut] [...]
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