This is Halloween week and I wanted to wish everyone a Happy Halloween! Everyone likes to be scared a little bit, right? I thought I would share with you some things I’ve seen during my day to day job of appraising houses in the Birmingham, Alabama area. The life of an appraiser is not too terribly dangerous or scary, however we do see a lot crazy stuff. Whether it is snakes, or spiders, or chicken feet (what in the world, right?) there is never a dull moment. So take a minute and check out some things I’ve seen, with a little dramatic photo retouching for Halloweens sake, and then let me know what scary or spooky things you run into in your line of work, I would be very interested in hearing from you.
Creepy, crawly creatures- I thought I would start off with one of my secret fears, and that is spiders. For someone who hates spiders I always find a way to run into their webs constantly. Thankfully most of them don’t have spiders in them, but on one particular day they did, however I noticed it before I met the spider face to face.
Sssslithering snakesssss- I’m not sure why but snakes don’t bother me as much as spiders, so when I saw this guy crawling across the road I was more interested in getting a good picture than turning the other way and running.
Ghostly spirits- Thankfully these spooks only occur one month out of the year. It always make things more interesting when appraisers take pictures of comparable sales. When you have things like this in the picture it’s pretty easy to guess what time of the year they were taken, right?
Welcome to my dungeon!- Believe it or not this statue at the front of someones driveway was not even a Halloween decoration. I took the picture in the middle of summer, go figure, maybe they like to celebrate the holiday all year.
Chicken feet- I ran across these chicken feet nailed to a wooded board while appraising a rural property. Not sure why the people did this but it sure did make the inspection interesting. Hope there wasn’t any voodoo involved!
Spooky houses- This house was as spooky on the inside as it was on the outside. It was an old home that had been in a family for a very long time. Do you know how hard it is to find comparable sales for something like this? Thankfully I did not have to find out as the bank cancelled the appraisal after they saw the pictures and were made aware of the run down condition of the home. It did not qualify for the loan.
Do you have a spooky or scary job, or do you have the opportunity to come across similar things in your job? I would like to hear your story so leave me a comment below.
If you have any real estate appraisal related questions you can call me at 205.243.9304, email me, or connect with me on Facebook., Twitter, or Youtube.
Speak Your Mind