Count on your friendly, neighborhood Realtor to give you a nice gift when you move into your new home!

I’ve made use of several “standard” housewarming gifts for my clients in the past few years, and just recently found one that I thought I’d stick with for good.

But all that changed last night, on a whim…

I remember when I first started in real estate, and a friend of mine made a joke at my expense that I didn’t immediately clue in to.  I dropped by his apartment one day and I said I was “in the neighborhood.”  He replied, “I guess you’re just going around dropping off plants, right?”  I didn’t get it…

He explained to me, “Don’t all you real estate big-wigs drop off plants for your clients when they buy a house?  I just assumed Tuesday’s were your days to deliver botanical wonders.”

Yeah, I had a good chuckle.

But it was even funnier when he rented a house from me and I went out and bought the largest plant I could find!  I rang his doorbell, left the plant, and drove off…

Nowadays, I switch up the housewarming gift depending on the client.  My gifts for clients who purchase a house or condo through me may end up with any one of a variety of life’s simple pleasures, although one client told me, “You can never go wrong with four litres of rye!”

Last night, I was invited to a housewarming party for a friend of mine named “Sport” who just moved in to his house in Leslieville.  I had provided Sport and his girlfriend with the business card of a restaurant manager in the King West area, and told them “Have a great night; on me!”  They were thankful, and I was happy to provide this small gesture of my appreciation for his business.

But upon sharing a beer with a few friends and their significant others, we got to talking about what he needed to get for his backyard and what would look good among the wood chips and fire logs.  Somebody said, “You need to get one of those garden-gnomes,” and this immediately got me thinking…

Now, before I dive into the following story, I’d like to point out that while I am a 28-year-old, mature, business professional, there was a time when I was a teenager, and did things that teenagers do.

But this story doesn’t actually involve me, but rather my brother and a couple of our long-time friends.  While coming home one night from an un-named bar back to our family residence in Leaside, the boys crossed through an un-named apartment building complex and spotted something that they “just had to have!” 

In their inebriated state of mind, they took one look at a 350-LB stone lion statue and decided that it would look great in our rumpus-room.

As the now-legend goes, it took the boys two hours and forty-five minutes to carry this great stone statue an equivalent of five residential blocks back to our childhood home.  While I slept through the wee hours of the night, my brother and his friends were carrying a 350-lb hunk of stone ten paces at a time, stopping to rest, and then repeating the process.

Now, back to the other night at my friend’s housewarming party.  After the garden-gnome comment, I wryly told the group who had gathered, “Forget the garden-gnome; you need a 350-lb stone lion!”  I grinned from ear-to-ear, but nobody was grinning with me.  I then told them the story that I mentioned above, however, I gave the full version during which they eagerly listened for a full five minutes.

I went on to say that the childhood house I grew up in is going to be torn down any moment.  It’s a true sign of the times…

My childhood house was situated on a 70×150 foot lot, whereas the houses on either side are on 35×150 foot lots; that is to say that our family home was on a double-lot.  A resident of the area saw an opportunity, and thus he purchased the house and over the course of the last ten months, he’s been working with the city for permits and a severance.

The house is going to be torn down, and two will be built in it’s place.

I recalled that this large stone lion statue still remained in the garage where we had left it one year ago, and during talks with the builder over the last few months, he told me quite frankly, “I might be the new owner, but you can take whatever you like from the house!  Whatever is there two weeks from now will be bulldozed anyways!”

And thus the group of friends at the housewarming party implored me to drive into Leaside, and bring back the statue!

“What better housewarming gift than a 350-lb stone lion statue?” one guest remarked.

Sport’s girlfriend had the final say (as girlfriends usually do…), and she slammed down her bottle of Stella Artois with authority and said, “You’re a Leo!  You need a statue of a lion!”

It was settled.

So at 10:00PM on a Monday night, I drove to Leaside and enlisted the help of a couple of friends to help lug this giant hunk of concrete into the backseat of my car.  All of a sudden, I felt like a kid again!  While I had nothing to do with this lion the first time around – more than a decade ago, I now found myself taking part in one of the most ridiculous “missions” I had run in years.

An hour later, I pulled into the back laneway behind my client’s new Leslieville house, and three of us pulled the massive sculpture out of the car, and lay it to rest next to the back fence.

“My God,” said Sport, “I can’t believe I have a freakin’ lion in my backyard!  Now what?”

I reached over and shook Sport’s hand and said, “Sport……welcome home.”

At this point, one of the other party guests leaned over to me, motioned to the stone lion, and then said, “If I ever buy a house through you, just buy me a bottle of wine and we’ll call it even.  Alright?”

If only I had this much fun with every client I ever dealt with.  Wouldn’t my life be grand?