Agents share their worst and funniest open home experiences

After running an open home and wondering why no buyers had come to what was an attractive home, a seasoned South Island agent left the property only to discover that the home for sale was in fact the house next door. Obviously people leave their doors unlocked in this beautiful city…

Open homes… and open plate? It’s amazing how many buyers will look in a fridge at open homes but one Wellington buyer plonked themselves in an armchair for a rest and, on seeing a bowl of nuts at his elbow, helped himself to a nibble. What he didn’t know was that the owner of the home, an elderly man, liked to suck the chocolate off his scorched almonds and leave the nuts left behind in this bowl...

One Auckland agent, Ray White’s Rick Mozessohn, can speak and understand both Mandarin and Cantonese pretty well - which comes in handy in his Mt Eden market. At a recent open home, the Chinese buyers coming through encouraged their adult daughter to ask him out (in Mandarin). Rick told the daughter not to worry as he’s happily fixed up, before telling the parents in Mandarin that they had a charming daughter. Pleased both camps, nice one. 

 A few years ago, a busy agent going from house to house on a Sunday of nine open homes, arrived at her next property to find there wasn’t a key in the lockbox. A family was waiting for the open home to start and handily they had a little boy, who fitted through the toilet window without any trouble and saved the day. He was thrilled with the Warehouse voucher for his troubles; but this wouldn’t pass Health and Safety these days though, she says.

An Auckland agent was hosting his open home ushering people in from outside. At the same time, a couple at the apartment across the road were enjoying, ahem, intimate relations on a Sunday morning with exceptional velocity and vigour and through an open window.

 Our agent says he just kept on guiding buyers into the house and away from the action, keeping his posture focused on the house, pretending it wasn’t happening - which was no mean feat.

At the end of an open home, everyone puts on their shoes and heads off home, right? Not always. At a recent open home, one adult pair of shoes were not retrieved. The agents diligently went back through the home to make sure the buyer hadn’t got stuck in a cupboard or locked in a bathroom, but no sign. They left them at the house, but several days later the shoes were retrieved. Someone who had been to a series of open homes and couldn’t remember which house they’d left the shoes at - where exactly they’d realised they were in socks remains a mystery… 

A Wellington agent remembers when the market was really hot and a lot of people were at the open home, a buyer, who was very interested in the house, took things to extremes. At the top of his voice, he asked the agent if this was the room 'that the old guy died in'. The vendor was very much alive and the agent had to clarify in an equally loud voice that no one had died on the property. She did it with humour, and he just laughed as he left - but she says that’s a buyer that she certainly could have done without!

At the end of an open home for an estate sale, a Wellington agent was told by a neighbour that a bag in the kitchen at the house contained something rather important. The family had left the ashes of their father, the former owner, at the house while they decided what to do with them. The family lawyer, when she called him, asked her to “be a dear” and bring them to him in town. Beyond the call of duty some might say…

A nervous newbie agent at his first ever open home watched in dismay as the key fell out of the lockbox and fell straight down into a nearby drain. He could see it at the bottom of the sump and rolled up his sleeve to reach it. Pressing his face to the ground he just about dislocated his shoulder to stretch and retrieve it. He got it! Triumphantly he looked up, only to see he had an audience of bemused open home goers peering down at him, now with a muddy face and soaked shirt. Lesson learned? Don’t attach the lockbox to the garden tap - there will always be a drain nearby…