In the last month, I’ve heard two of the most bizarre, unbelievable real estate stories that I’ve quite possibly ever heard.

So how does this fit into the “it’s a small world” theme?

Well, it was the exact same story, just told from the opposite sides…

Every Monday morning in my office, we have our weekly “sales meeting.”

The meeting usually consists of two parts: 1) the sales and new listings, 2) a topic for discussion, theme, or presentation.

At the risk of getting into hot water, I will say right here and now that I’ve always thought the “sales” portion of the meeting is simply a way for self-indulgent Realtors to stroke their egos about how much business they did last week.  With the massive, wall-sized sales-board upstairs, AND a flawless, computerized list of all the sales on our MLS system, why do we need to read the sales out in front of the whole company?

People like to hear their own name called, and then have a dollar figure attached to it…

But the second half of the meeting is always informative and important.

One thing I’ve learned in the last half-decade is that no matter how much you think you know about real estate, you can always learn something new.

Not too long ago, the subject of the day was “Open Houses;” more specifically, how we as Realtors are working them to our advantage.

Realtors work open houses to meet buyers, just as pick-up artists work nightclubs to meet women.  Realtors aren’t interested in buyers working with agents, just as pick-up artists aren’t interested in married, unavailable women.  The goal is to make as many contacts and get as many leads as possible from 2-4PM on Saturday, just as a pick-up artist would talk to as many women and get as many phone numbers in a night.

A question arose at the meeting: “How and when do you contact your prospects and leads?”  If Vince Vaughan were there, he might suggest, “Wait six-and-a-half days before you call your beautiful baby….”

But the rest of us talked amongst ourselves.

One agent said, “I sit down on Sunday night around 6PM and call everybody I met.  That’s the best time to reach them.

Another agent suggested, “I mail out hand-written cards that say, ‘Thank You for coming to my open house!'”

This was all well and good, until one agent blew us away with this:

“If I don’t get face-time within 24 hours of the meet, I know I won’t be working with them.”

The room went quiet.

We asked him to elaborate, and unfortunately, he did…

“If I’m not sitting down at the kitchen table with my open house prospects within one day of meeting them, I know they aren’t serious enough to be working with.”

All the other agents in the room collectively thought, “That’s all well and good, but how do you make that happen?”

As if he were reading our thoughts, he continued, “That’s why I go and knock on their front door as soon as the open house is done.  I go around from 4-6PM visiting all the people that came through my open house.”

The room went quiet.

Anybody who was sleeping, woke up.

Anybody who was listening with a half an ear, borrowed a third ear from a friend.

Not a single jaw in the room remained far from the floor, and finally somebody spoke up and asked, “You do WHAT???”

This agent told us that he took all the names and addresses of his contacts and physically drove around knocking on the doors of the people that happened upon his open house that day.  He would ask to come inside their house and speak with them for 5-10 minutes.

I was amazed.

I spoke up: “Maybe this is an age thing, but I can personally state with 110% certainty if I walked up the driveway of a prospect from my open house, they’d probably call the cops.  I’m 28 years old and most of my clients are 25-39 years old.  They want to talk via email since they mostly sit at a desk or carry a blackberry, and we might have the occasional phone call.”

The agent shrugged and gave me a “suit yourself” look.

Fast forward to last night when I attended the Interior Design Show at the C.N.E.

First of all, let me say that I’ve never felt so under-dressed in my life.  Who would have thought that jeans and a sweater would make you feel self-conscious?  Everybody there were dressed to the nines; I felt like I was at the opera, ballet, or any of Toronto’s pretentious nightclubs…

After a colleague and I downed several free alcoholic beverages (thank you,  Belvedere Vodka!), we went to scope out some high-end patio furniture and got-to-talking with the girl working the floor.

She gave us a half-honest sales pitch as it was 10:00PM already and she had been working all day, and then we sat down and chatted about our patios, backyards and the patio furniture that we had.

One thing led to another, and she revealed she lived in Leaside and that she knew a lot of the same people we did.

She knew a lot of the same houses as we did.

She had seen a lot of the same houses we did.

And then she told us about her favorite house, which shall remain nameless.

“It’s gorgeous and it’s truly my dream home,” she said, “But the agent that worked that open house really creeped me out.”

We asked her why, and she said, “Well, he seemed nice and all, but at about 5PM when I was sitting at home preparing for a dinner party I was throwing that night, the friggin guy showed up at my door!”

Hmmm….this story started to sound somewhat familiar.

“Go on,” I said, even though she didn’t need the incentive.

“Yeah, he knocked on my door and I was like ‘Woooooow….what the…..is this the guy from the house I saw?’  Then he basically walked in through the door and started commenting on my floors, walls, and everything in between.  I couldn’t believe the audacity – he just walked inside and made himself at home like we were best friends.  It was so creepy I wanted to vomit.  I told my husband ‘Get rid of him,’ and I went upstairs and basically hid for ten minutes.”

Maybe it was all the Belvedere Vodka, but this version of the story was much more entertaining!

She went on in great detail about how he called incessantly and sent real estate brochures via mail for several weeks until the insanity finally stopped.

And to think she was just out-and-about one day and happened to walk into an open house, completely unsuspecting, and wrote down her name and address as people are generally asked to do.

The poor girl.

How was she to know that she had just entered the layer of the most over-zealous, out-of-touch, real estate agent in the biz?

It take all kinds in my line of work.

But this guy just makes me laugh.

I ran into a dozen people at the Interior Design Show last night that I knew; some from work, some friends-of-friends, and even a girl I went to high school with that still wouldn’t give me the time of day!

But meeting “Melissa” by the patio furniture and hearing her story made my freaking night.

Actually, that made my whole week…