François: An Excerpt from ‘Open House: Mostly True Tales of Crazy in Southern Real Estate’

Suzy Trotta is the author of Open House: Mostly True Tales of Crazy in Southern Real Estate, by Howling Hills Publishing. A native of Nashville, Suzy Trotta lives in Knoxville with her husband and their four-legged fur babies. She earned a master’s degree in German from the University of Tennessee, which is why she sold real estate for 20 years. When she’s not writing, she enjoys reading, watching Dateline, and sewing.

Here’s an excerpt from the book. She’ll be doing a signing at Union Avenue Books this Saturday, Aug. 23,  from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

‘François’

Margaret was a normal-enough-sounding woman from out West who called me about relocating to Tennessee. We talked extensively on the phone, and I even had her pre-qualified by a loan officer before she came to town. Margaret needed to be out in the country because she had a lot of dogs and cats. She also had a rooster, which is not legal in the city. None of this struck me as odd; I know a lot of hipsters who have chickens and some who even have goats.

Margaret was older than me, maybe late fifties or early sixties with wiry bobbed gray hair and unfortunate-looking clothes. She was kind and easy to talk to, always a help when working with a buyer in a buyer’s market. This was back in the early aughts of the twenty-first century when we still drove clients around in our cars. It was also shortly after the collapse of the housing market, so a gazillion homes were available to view.

I met Margaret at the office and we took off on the first day of our house hunting adventure, which would last about a week. I learned that she was retired from teaching college level courses and lived on a kind of urban farm where she had a lot of animals. Like a lot of animals.

One of these was her beloved rooster, François. She talked about him quite a lot, and their relationship was more involved than I could have imagined. Francois, it turned out, didn’t live in a coop outside; he lived inside her home. And slept in her bed. This information led to my brain forming so many questions at once that I couldn’t get one out before she continued with even more information. François also rode in the car with her. How? In a chihuahua car seat she had converted for him to roost on so he could ride shotgun.

While imagining that and still trying to process a rooster living in the house, I finally came out with my first question. “Is he potty trained?” This seemed like an important question, regardless of the species living in your home, be it human or avian.

No, I was informed, he was not. But this wasn’t a problem, since she had all hardwood floors and his No. 2s were little pellets she simply picked up with a tissue and flushed down the toilet.

This seemed fairly believable at the time. It was only later that someone who had grown up on a chicken farm told me this was, well, chicken shit. Chicken poop, he said, was nasty. A quick Google search confirmed this. It also informed me that chicken waste can be hazardous to humans because of a bacteria it contains. Cool.

But Margaret wasn’t done. She also had a pet snake. Now, I hate snakes. Like phobia level cannot deal with snakes. But wanting to get that commission check, I asked, as one would, what kind of snake it was.

She said it was a “pet quality” snake she found in her backyard. She couldn’t believe it was just out there, doing its snake thing, like an abandoned puppy or kitten. I asked her what made it “pet quality” and she said, “Oh, you’d know if you saw it.” I wouldn’t. And I would bet François’ butt pellets that it was just a garden snake.

But the real doozy came when she explained that, like François, the snake lived in the house. Like loose. In the house. No terrarium, no leash, no nothing. And here’s where I struggle not to get lightheaded–the snake often slept in the bed with Margaret and the rooster.

Her favorite cat, she continued, really loved this snake. She often caught it “playing” with the snake when she came home. Having cats myself, I asked what this looked like. She said the cat would “playfully try to pet the snake with its paws.” That cat was trying to kill that damn snake, but by this point, I was just nodding and saying “Huh!” a lot. After all, we had a whole week of showings to get through.

As the week progressed, I learned that carpet was definitely not an option, as hardwoods or other hard surfaces made cleaning up after François easiest. I’m also sure carpet irritated the snake’s belly, but I never found out for sure. So our criteria were county only, no carpet, and under $150,000 (doable at the time) and privacy. I didn’t want to let my mind wander too far there. Altogether, this made the search a little tougher, but there were literally thousands of homes to choose from.

We drove and we drove, Margaret and I. Every morning I would meet her and we would look at houses until I would go home exhausted around 3 p.m. Nothing seemed quite right: the location was off, not enough privacy, nowhere for her to garden, no good room for François.

One day, we only had one more house to see and I was hoping to get it over with quickly when Margaret asked if we could stop at Arby’s.

Now to me, Arby’s is the saddest of all fast food options and I would only eat there in an absolute emergency. Everything about it, from the nasty shake flavors to that orange cheese they put on those sandwiches, makes me gag. But Margaret wanted Arby’s, so that’s where we went.

I would normally pay for a client’s lunch, but I drew the line at paying for this swill. I was hangry and cranky and just wanted to get this Horsey sauce nightmare over with. Against her wishes, I told her we would have to drive through instead of dining in or we wouldn’t make the next showing on time. This was technically true, but dear God, no one deserves to dine in at Arby’s.

She ordered her food and passed her money over to me and seemed concerned I wasn’t ordering. I said something about food allergies and she let it go. Again, she wanted me to park the car while she ate, but I protested, citing our time frame again, and off we went.

If I had three wishes in my whole entire life, I would have used one of them to transport me out of the car the day Margaret ate that roast beef sandwich in my passenger seat. The smell, combined with her happy bear eating noises and her smacking mouth sounds were unbearable. I have never seen someone eat something so nasty so slowly and so sloppily. I tried to keep my eyes on the road.

For our last showing, we drove to the deepest reaches of the county and this was where Margaret found “the” house. It was a small, updated ranch on about an acre of property with shade trees in front, plenty of room to garden in back, and all hardwood and tile inside. She made the noises people make when they’ve found their house and exclaimed that it was perfect, she loved it, and she wanted it. She went about deciding where each of her animals would live and making sure there were no steps François couldn’t handle.

On the long drive back to the office to make the offer, she told me she would have to rent a passenger van to make the move. Before I could ask why, she explained that she would have to crate approximately three dogs, four cats, the snake, and some other miscellaneous smaller animals. François would, naturally, ride shotgun.

We got to the office and I wrote the offer, taking plenty of time to explain the contract and the process to her. It was dark by the time I left to go home, having worked a twelve-hour day. Getting in the car, I was greeted by the empty Arby’s wrapper balled up on the floorboard.

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The next day, our offer accepted, I arranged the home inspection and sent the contract to the lender as Margaret went back home. The home inspection happened on a Wednesday, a few days later, and it was what we call “very clean,” hardly any issues at all that needed to be fixed. Margaret called and I assumed she would be thrilled, but she was not.

“Suzy, all I’ve done is worry myself sick about this house. I just don’t think it’s the one for me.”

I was shocked. I wasn’t sure what had happened between her seeing the house and now. Had she just been high on Horsey sauce? I tried to walk her through it and even asked her to sleep on her decision to terminate the contract. While she could technically pull out based on the home inspection, this would be hard to justify to the listing agent. Margaret, however, insisted I do it immediately. She didn’t want to waste any more time and knew she wouldn’t sleep that night if she left it one more day.

So that’s what I did. I drew up the paperwork, had Margaret sign and called the listing agent to break the news. She was not happy and was more than a little confused. I tried to calm her down as best as I could, hung up, and figured I had lost a solid week of my life.

The next morning Margaret called me again.

“Suzy, you won’t believe this, but I’ve made a horrible mistake. I love that house, I just got cold feet. Have you sent the paperwork yet? Is it too late to move forward?”

I scrambled. The sellers hadn’t signed yet, so we were technically still under contract. I asked Margaret if she was sure this time. She assured me she was and she said to tell the sellers she was so sorry for any stress she had caused them. This was a big move and she just had a lot of anxiety. I asked her about three more times if she was sure, then hung up, took a deep breath, and called the listing agent.

While somewhat relieved, she was also skeptical. I couldn’t blame her; I was too. But Margaret had already called the loan officer and told her to move forward with the appraisal, usually a sign a buyer is serious. The listing agent and I laughed about how crazy people are and I hung up, thinking I should never be so quick to think I’ve wasted a whole week of my life.

The following day Margaret called again. She couldn’t buy the house. She couldn’t move across the country. She felt so much pressure from everyone and it was all too much.

“My anxiety is making François pull out his feathers!”

By that point, my anxiety would have fried François up in a damn skillet. I once again asked her if she was sure, as we were never coming back a third time. She told me she was, and I waited all day just to make sure. Finally, I called the listing agent, who had some choice words for me. I told her I also had choice words, but I wasn’t in control of the situation. She told me the sellers would never sell this home to this woman ever, and I told her I understood, hung up, and couldn’t believe I actually did this for a living.

Several months passed, with me having a slight case of PTSD every time I drove past an Arby’s, but there was no news from Margaret, and I didn’t expect there to be. Six months later, she called to say she was coming to town. Her anxiety was gone, she could see clearly now and this was the move she needed to make. Was that little house still on the market?

I told her I would be out of town the week she was coming but had a wonderful agent (whoever was working the duty desk) who would be happy to help her. I wasn’t going anywhere, but she was unfazed and said she looked forward to working with Poor Clueless Agent Who Was Desperate for Business.

That agent is all of us at some point in our career.

I wish I could say I learned a lot of valuable lessons from Margaret, but I didn’t. When you are a relatively new agent, or hell, an agent who needs money, you will ignore just about anything to get a commission check.

Going back to my personal fears, maybe the thing that scares me most is the things I have been willing to do in the name of making money in this business and the things I still might do in the future. Like letting people eat Arby’s in my car and thinking that people who let animals use their home as a toilet might actually close on a deal. But the scariest thing of all is knowing that I might be the craziest person I’ve ever worked with.