Real Estate: Top 10 Grossest Finds

Glamour, wealth and, oh yeah… icky icky stuff. Real estate is full of surprises, whether it is a quick close of escrow, the seller’s adult daughter living in the in law unit, or a pet cemetery in the front yard. Here is a countdown of the top ten more horrific finds at our listings:

10. To kick things off, I’ll start with the least amount of sick factor. You walk into a listing that has just been cleaned. You have a showing in 20 minutes so you take a walk around the house to turn on all the lights and make sure everything that is out of place is back in space. 2 bedrooms down, now walking to the hall bath and uckkkkkk. Thick beard trimmings covering the sink. I don’t know how hard it is to rinse beard trimmings down the sink, but it doesn’t seem like brain science. Although this is just plain gross, this is the least of a realtor’s worries.

9. One thing we see that is absolutely disgusting, but common, are rat’s. Rat’s are inevitable in a lot of houses, although inspectors usually find them alive. For anyone who hasn’t had the pleasure of smelling a dead animal somewhere in your home, it is probably one of the worst things ever. Walking through a house wondering what that smell is and where it’s coming from is a nasty play on the old school guessing game. Not only do they smell bad but they are mini destroyers. Beware of your down jackets in the attic because these devil rodent spawn will sniff it out and tear it up.

8. I love cats but cleaning out a litter box that doesn’t have your cat’s dump in it is disgusting. Imagine walking into a listing, helping the sellers pack and clean their house and you get a whiff of something horrendous, 3 week old kitty rocca. Not only do you see and smell, but now you have to clean it before the next showing.

7. There are some things you just can't forget. Seeing a seller’s dirty underwear on the ground while walking through the house before a showing. It’s another thing to pile dirty clothes into a closet when trying to clean up quickly, but leaving dirty underwear out in the open for someone else to deal with is plain nasty.

6. The one part of real estate that people forget about are the things you do for your clients, especially the elderly ones. Most elderly people that have lived in the same house their whole lives, and they have a lot of shit. Dusty dirty clothes are hard to pack, especially when they’re not yours. The dust flying out of the packing bag with each load of clothes puts a bad taste in your mouth. If you’re ever in this situation, wear gloves!

5. The countdown continues... Accidents happen, when you’re 5. Having a pee stained mattress when you are a full grown adult is not only gross, but it’s embarrassing. As realtors, a lot of the time you have to suck it up and pretend you didn’t see anything for the sake of the sale.

4. What’s worse than a pee stained mattress…. A blood stained mattress. This is honestly one of the worst things I’ve seen in the field. Again, this kind of stuff happens, but there are ways to fix it and there is definitely a way to get a new mattress before people come in to stage your house, using your furniture.

3. There are a few do’s and don’t of being a clean human being and having good hygiene. One of the don’t is leaving used q tips under a pillow. The last thing I want to see/ smell when I strip the sheets to make a bed with brand new sheets is used q tips. The worst thing about this is.. they’re sticky. The earwax from the q tip sticks to the pillowcase for a sticky and yellow extraction.

2. Almost to first place, toe nails. Clipping your toes is a normal task of anyone. After you cut your toenails, in the bathroom, you throw them in the trash. That is normal etiquette. I guess this person didn’t get the memo because there were probably months worth of toenail clippings on his bedside table. Can anyone say.. GROSS!

1. Here we are. What you’ve all been waiting for. Number 1 on our ick factor is the famous pet cemetery. Landscaping is a huge part of selling a house and for this particular property, it needed all new grass in the front. We got a call from the landscapers about a weird find so we went up to take a look. There were rocks forming circles across the front of the property where the grass was supposed to go. None of us have ever seen anything like this, so we dug them up. The findings from the dig were intense. The front grass was the burial ground of past family pets. Cat, dog, and guinea pig carcasses were scattered along the front lawn. This was by far the most disgusting and putile thing any of us have seen.

Don’t get me wrong, real estate is fun and fulfilling, but there are some things that come across your path you will never see in any other profession. If you are in real estate or are thinking to get into this field, prepare yourself for the nastiness that comes along with it.

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