Atlanta Real Estate | Atlanta Housing News for Real Estate

Home managers are supposed to stage your home, keeping it model perfect, with nice furnishings.  The reasoning for this is multi-faceted.  First it is believe that an occupied home with nice furnishings will make the home appear better and appeal to the buyers. Next, there is someone tending to the property, cutting the grass, cleaning, keeping the utilities on, and making the home appear well manicured and tended to.  So far so good?  Years ago the concept of professional home sitters arose out of the depressed Texas real estate market in the 80's.  Persons with nice furniture that could move in an out of a home in a moments notice had to be screened and have references to get into the program.  In return, the home sitters were allowed to live in some wonderful properties at a greatly reduced price or rent to the home managers corporation until the home sold, and they would move on to the next vacant home.  As a professionally run program with strict rules, it worked well!  It helped homes sell!

Candidates for house sitting should be immaculate housekeepers, and have nice furniture so the home is show-ready 24/7.   Home managers almost never have pets and cannot smoke in your home, nor are they allowed to permit their visiting relatives who smoke to camp out in your home with their dogs.   Anyway, when you sign on, that's what you believe you're getting.  However, that is the way it used to be!  Enter the amateurs!

This past weekend, I showed two homes occupied by home managers.  I had to call the agent first to get an appointment to see the home so I called the morning before. First warning! They kept stalling on when the home could be shown.  You know the term...the listing agent said "Let me get back to you...."

Not to bore you, with the details, when we got to this property... I understood why they stalled.  The home manager was home.  Second warning.  The home manager was wearing what New Yorker's call a "tenement" tee shirt, cigarette dangling from his lips, chasing his dogs down.  The property hadn't been vacuumed or cleand in some time.  It reminded me of the book, "Lost weekend!"  Ashtrays were filled, boxes thrown into the garage, newspapers all over the kitchen table, week old dishes in the sink; the smell of damp, stale smoke had us wincing.  The home manager had no intention of leaving and seemed put out that we were even there.  Last warning.  We left and won't put a contract on that home because I don't need to have my client paint a house to kill the smoke odors and yellowing, send the drapes to the dry cleaners, have carpets sanitized for the cigarette and pet odors and stains.  A second home we showed appeared even worse!  It was also lived in by house sitters that had trashed a home I intended to sell!  It was obvious they moved in themselves and tore the place up while doing so.  While we were given fast access to that second home that was managed and the manager was not at home, the state of the property was deja vu, Groundhog's Day, La Vida es Sueno.  It is my professional opinion that both homes would have a better chance selling without having any house sitters.  They were trashed!  The sellers were given a line of bull from someone that was learning on the job, but had no experience in real estate and how to sell a home.  One could only wonder if this was a sweetheart deal, and they were collecting rent from a friend or relative at the seller's expense.  If only the seller knew it was obvious to everyone else the house sitters do not want the homes to sell!