The Rogue's Gallery of Homes™

[captainsblog]

If you've ever lived in or around Rochester, you'd know the name of one of the oldest and biggest firms of realtors there. When I got to town in the mid-80s, they probably had close to half the market, at a time when ReMax and Realty This and Hunt That were on the "beyond here be dragons" parts of the Monroe County map. They had an in-house Home Securities Corporation to finance the mortgage for you, back before most other realtors offered this service. When we went to sell the condo we'd first bought after getting married, they listed our home and eventually bought it from us when they couldn't sell it. 

In time, though, their dominance faded. National and (even worse) Buffalo-based chains came to town, and while I still see a fair number of their listings when driving around back there, it's nowhere near what it was. So I wasn't surprised to see them opening an office here- right down the street from my office. I suspected it was part of a merger of mortgage companies, since a lot of those smaller shops went out of business after the crash. Now, though? They're beginning to advertise that office, and one other downtown, in our alt-weekly- not as the grand dame of the next city over, but as a hot and hip n00b, "the best place to list- and actually sell- your home. Period." Their proof? Nothing more than a list of house addresses, one after another.

As anyone knows who's ever gotten snailmail to or from me, our street has a rather distinctive name. It's easily misspelled and is barely pronounceable without spelling out both words (as mailing-list miscues of it from over the years will prove). So those words in the ad jumped out to my eye, and when I saw the house number, it was clear that they were claiming to have been involved in the listing, and actual sale, of the home across the street from us. Not the one that actually did sell a few weeks back (we suspect for a lot less than it was listed for), but the one next to it. Our neighbors Jay and Renee bought it maybe five years ago, and put it on the market last fall after they found out a second child was on the way. They had their eyes on a nearby home for sale that was big enough for their bigger family, but they couldn't incur the added expense of affording (and significantly fixer-upping) the bigger house unless they could sell this one.

And.... they couldn't. So the boys from Rochester did not, in fact, sell their home.  Even better? They didn't even list it.

Period.

Comments

[firynze.livejournal.com]

Wow. I guess it's not deceptive advertising if you're not actually saying you sold those homes, just putting addresses in your ad?

[bill_sheehan.livejournal.com]

It's indisputable. Assertive sentences are compelling - and persuasive. Period.

Johnson's Funeral Home. The best place to wake - and bury - your loved one. Period.

See?