Tuesday, April 21, 2026

The second showing was supposed to be quick. Buyers loved the house, just wanted their parents to see it before making an offer. We closed three weeks later, everyone happy. Day after closing, the husband calls me. "There's water coming through the ceiling." Not a drip. A stream. Coming through the kitchen light fixture. Turns out the sellers knew the upstairs bathroom had a leak. Had known for months. They'd been putting a bucket under it, emptying it every few days. Moved the bucket when we did showings. The inspector missed it because the ceiling was dry during inspection. Because someone had emptied the bucket that morning. "Did you know about this?" the husband asks me. No. Obviously no. "Because my wife thinks you knew." The repair estimate came back at fourteen thousand dollars. Subfloor was rotted through. The buyers wanted the sellers to pay. Sellers said prove it. Lawyers got involved. I still see the wife at the grocery store sometimes. She doesn't say hello.

The photos looked great. That was the whole point. Spent like three hours staging this place on Maple, got the light right, everything crisp. Posted the listing on our company page, boosted it, all the normal stuff. Then someone in the comments goes "isn't this the house where that guy died" and I'm thinking, what? No. Nobody died there. The sellers never disclosed anything, I checked the records, nothing. But this comment gets 40 likes in two hours. Turns out there was a house fire on the same street back in 2019. Different house. Two doors down. But now everyone thinks it's the same one and I've got people sharing the post saying "they're trying to sell the death house" and my broker calls me on a Sunday asking what's going on. I replied to the comment with the actual address of the fire, which — yeah, that was stupid, because then that homeowner called the office Monday morning absolutely furious that I "outed their property" even though it was public record and they weren't even selling. Pulled the whole listing, reposted it Tuesday without the boost. Got maybe 200 views instead of 12 thousand. Sellers want to know why the open house only had four people. I can't explain to them that their house went viral for being a place where nobody died. There's no version of that conversation that makes sense. They keep asking about "the Facebook thing" and I just

She called on a Sunday. Said she wanted to see the listing on Maple, the one with the sunroom. Great, fine, I'll meet you at two. She shows up with her husband and their dog. Big dog. Some kind of mastiff mix, had to be 120 pounds. Nobody mentioned a dog. The sellers had cats. Three of them. The cats were supposedly locked in the master bedroom but one got out when I was showing the kitchen and the dog just lost it. Knocked over this antique hall table, broke a lamp that was apparently worth eight hundred dollars. The husband's trying to grab the collar, the wife is screaming at the husband, the cat's on top of the refrigerator hissing. And then the dog pees. Right on the hardwood. The original hardwood that the sellers had just refinished for like three grand before listing. The couple leaves. Doesn't apologize, doesn't offer to pay for anything, just leaves. The wife says something about how I should have warned them about the cats. Me. I should have warned them. The sellers wanted me to pay for the lamp. Called my broker. Said I was negligent. The listing agent had to get involved. There were emails for two weeks. Nobody bought that house for another four months. The pee stain never fully came out, you could see it in certain light. We had to disclose it. A dog pee disclosure. That's a real thing I had to write.