Real Estate As A Contact Sport

(Or How I lost A Perfectly Good Pair of Dockers While Doing Property Checks)

Every new day is exciting and filled with untold potential. I don’t think it matters whether you’re a CEO, a mechanic, an entrepreneur or a, well, Real Estate agent. Today I had meetings in the morning, touched bases with consumers and agents on some deals in process, and was preparing for an afternoon appointment to have a seller sign a purchase agreement. Not an unusal day by any means.



Could Have Been Worse

 A new property assignment altered the flow a bit, but between the morning and afternoon commitments I had to get some weekly property inspections done. I know the neighbors for my distressed properties, so I wasn’t particularly on edge to see the usual German Shorthair running around at one of my listings. He’s older, still has a lot of energy and has always been on the friendly side. I didn’t think twice about walking around my listing to take pictures and do my normal visual check on its condition.

Apparently the dog felt otherwise. I heard the jingling collar and turned to see him charging me, but not growling or showing teeth. I thought he wanted to play. Before I could reach down to pet him, he’d grabbed my slacks at the pocket and ripped about a 14” swath down the seam. I yelled and he turned around to go back to ‘his’ yard. Luckily he got all fabric and didn’t break the skin, but it wasn’t pretty when I walked directly away from ‘his’ territory and found that he was again running towards me.

A couple more loud verbal commands turned him around, but he kept coming back. After the third try, he returned to his yard and left me alone. Needless to say I got to my car and drove away. Actually, I drove home to find more suitable business attire since I was now pretty well ‘air conditioned’. I may have gotten a few compliments on my selection of boxer shorts (or maybe not), but prudence won out and I made myself presentable again.

There are likely many lessons to be learned here, which brings me back to, “every new day is exciting and filled with untold potential.” The exciting part is pretty obvious. The untold potential is that I was made aware that I needed a wake up call on my personal safety habits. I learned the hard way that I can’t ‘trust’ dogs to always behave the same way – especially dogs with whom I have very limited contact. I will also add a pepper spray to my ‘traveling real estate’ kit. Of course, the pepper spray will clip onto my belt or stay in my hand as I get out of my vehicle and am sure there’s no obvious danger. And yes, I will catch that neighbor to let him know his dog tried to bite me.

It’s a good thing to remember that threats to your safety come from a variety of causes, and sometimes we let ourselves become inured to situations that may look the same, but are not. Stay alert. And carry an extra pair of slacks.