Entries Tagged 'Real Estate Humor' ↓

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A Fontana, California man is accused of turning his home into a marijuana grow house after a bank examiner found the evidence during an inspection. This has to be one of the stupidest crooks of all time.

After investing a couple of hundred thousand into the home and equipment to create the grow house, going through the effort of stealing electricity, and then growing the pot, these morons fail to pay the mortgage and go into foreclosure?

The level of stupidity with this guy is unbelievable.

A bank employee stumbled upon a foreclosed house used to grow marijuana, leading to the seizure of an estimated $4.5 million in drugs in two houses and an arrest Saturday. Angel Wayhang Kou, 30, of Rancho Cucamonga was booked into jail on suspicion of cultivating marijuana, maintaining a residence for drugs, theft of utilities and conspiracy…
“They had probably well into the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment in both homes, between the lights, the electrical, the water, the filtering and venting systems,” Decker said. Police said Kou stole about $100,000 in electricity from Southern California Edison between the two homes by bypassing electrical boxes. Decker said Kou owned both homes, but both were in foreclosure.  San Bernardino County Sun.

My apologies to UB40 for the title, but this is not something you would want to see when you are hearing noises downstairs in the middle of the night.

An 8 foot alligator sitting in your kitchen who chased your cat into the house after pushing in the screen porch door. Florida living can be a wonderful experience but alligators in the kitchen is a bit much.

Sandra Frosti went into her kitchen to see what was causing the noises and found an 2.4-metre alligator thrashing around on the floor.
The 69-year-old had returned from an evening out to hear scratching sounds in her home, near Tampa.
When she discovered what was causing them, she ran to her bedroom to call emergency services, who had to be convinced that the creature had got in to her house. The operator taking her call asked whether what she had seen was actually an iguana.
Police and a specialist wildlife trapper eventually arrived to catch the alligator. Gouges from the creature’s claws were left in Frosti’s floor.
It is thought the reptile may have been chasing her cat when it came into the house.  via  guardian.co.uk.

Video from MSNBC

Starbucks Chief Executive Howard Schultz thinks the downturn in real estate is causing sales at his stores to take a dive. But I am wondering whether it is because of the general hit to the economy or the amount of real estate agents who have had to kick the habit as their revenue has dropped.

Face it, real estate agents have to be one of the highest caffeinated groups around with the constant zooming between all of the hundreds of details it take to sell homes. Could the Starbucks decline be a sign that foretells a significant drop in agents out there?

But seriously, for many of us Starbucks is a luxury. Add to that the company has seriously overbuilt for the demand. In our small suburban community there are 3 different Starbucks including one in the local Target. I think that like many companies they overestimated demand in good-times and now have to ratchet back as the economy slows.

Starbucks has long said its $3 to $5 coffee is an “affordable luxury,” but that assumption is being challenged because consumers are spending less on everything, from dining out to buying clothing, as home prices fall and the cost of necessities such as gas and fuel continue to rise.

“We’re an affordable luxury, but there are forces of nature here that we can’t control,” Schultz told journalists.

He told investors: “You have an economy that is really in a tailspin.” via  Reuters.

This reminds me of the past week. Fortunately things do get better.

Hattip to Barry Schwartz (aka RustyBrick) via Twitter

We found a great cleaning solution…

Click Here

(You will need Shockwave installed on your computer to work)

What is the cry that is heard across the real estate spectrum? The one I am hearing is that there are not enough buyers and too many agents. Red Oak Realty in Berkeley, California has found a way to turn the down time into a great fun tool that will bring people in and raise the awareness of their firm with the new game Realius.

The game, Realius, allows people to guess the price of a home on the market. Using the latest web 2.0 technologies and adding a pinch of fun to a broth of real estate voyeurism allows Red Oak to stand out from the crowd.

I am sure that the game was not cheap to put together but the exposure that Red Oak Realty will get from the game will dwarf the price they paid.

And what it screams to the 20 somethings that will soon be buying their first homes is that Red Oak gets it. And that is a huge hurdle to cross.

Living in Georgia I am not going great on my guesses in homes in Berkeley, but it is fun to play still. And going through it I am learning about the market.

Great job Red Oak Realty!

Now my question to you is, what is your brokerage doing to stand out in your market?

One of the favorite phrases thrown around during the real estate slowdown is that homeowners treated their homes as a cash machine. Now we have an ironic story coming out of Minneapolis, Minnesota of an empty ATM being found in a foreclosed home.

Investigators are still puzzling about how and when a cash-less cash machine ended up in a foreclosed north Minneapolis house, and where it belongs. “It’s not like it was a picnic table that was taken,” said Sgt. Jesse Garcia. “I’m sure somewhere [a machine is] missing.”
The mystery began Saturday when a city housing inspector was checking out a foreclosed house on the 3700 block of N. Penn Avenue and found the machine. It had been pried open and all the money was gone.
Forensics experts are trying to determine what, if any, evidence it may contain that could lead to a suspect. via the Star Tribune

Is this a case of the homeowners being career criminals who ran bust outs in real estate and also were thieves, or did the folks who stole the ATM ditch it in a empty home that just happened to be foreclosed upon? Investigators hope to find out but to me this is a parable of the segment of the housing market that did use their home as a cash machine.

Click here to for a Free Foreclosure search in your area if you are still interested in getting into the foreclosure game to find properties near your home.

We get so caught up in the 9 to 5, 4 bedroom and 2 and a half baths routine that we do not take much time to have some fun. Since I can not take all of my readers out for drinks or a round of golf, I want to pass along something that will enlighten and amuse you I got in an email from my Dad. If you ever wanted to know about why the bigwig is called the chairman of the board read these two historical anecdotes.

As incredible as it sounds, men and women took baths only twice a year (May and October)! Women kept their hair covered, while men shaved their heads (because of lice and bugs) and wore wigs. Wealthy men could afford good wigs made from wool. They couldn’t wash the wigs, so to clean them they would carve out a loaf of bread, put the wig in the shell, and bake it for 30 minutes. The heat would make the wig big and fluffy, hence the term “big wig.” Today we often use the term “here comes the Big Wig” because someone appears to be or is powerful and wealthy.

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In the late 1700s, many houses consisted of a large room with only one chair. Commonly, a long wide board folded down from the wall, and was used for dining. The “head of the household” always sat in the chair while everyone else ate sitting on the floor. Occasionally a guest, who was usually a man, would be invited to sit in this chair during a meal. To sit in the chair meant you were important and in charge. They called the one sitting in the chair the “chair man” Today in business, we use the expression or title “Chairman” or “Chairman of the Board.”

Michael Baden is a kindred soul as he is willing to take on the impossible just to see what happens. A real estate agent in the Phoenix, Arizona region he has taken on the impossible home to sell, a 150,000 dollar fixer upper (which only a real estate agent could call a fixer upper) in the most disreputable condition imaginable. 

 Every picture of the home would make Athol Kay’s Bad MLS Photo of the Day Top 10 of all time hands down.

The dirt and filth that permeates this shack would make the infamous cleaning ladies from the BBC’s show “How Clean is Your House” go running in shock and awe.

And the best part of the listing, the home has tenants. My bet is that if you could ever arrange a showing they would be in the house when the buyers arrived.

If you have the stomach for it, here is a video tour to download, my bet this is the first time that this musical piece was used for a virtual tour.  You have to love Michael Baden’s gumption and humor and if he does sell the home for the list price in this market he deserves to be Realtor of the Year for the nation!

Thanks to Jose Miguel at KNXV for the story.

As a real estate professional, note taking and contract signing is a way of life. The Mont Blanc pens are renowned for their style and feel as ink meets paper. Well, if you are like me, the 200 dollar price tag of a Mont Blanc is beyond what I will pay for a pen.

However the folks at Instructables have come up with a hack that will give you the feel of writing with a Mont Blanc at a fraction of the price. This is my kind of deal.

Transform a $3 pen into a $200 pen in just seconds. Mont Blanc pens are the worlds finest writing pens but they make specialized refills so you must buy their $200+ pens to use their amazing ink…until now. This is the easiest hack/adaptation to give anyone the king’s writing ink. Instructables.