Posted by Barb Shewmake on January 10, 2009 at 7:08pm
I just had to tell you all about the day I had today. It began as many Saturday mornings do at my house. My husband is an REO Broker too and almost every weekend, we catch some 'quality' time together driving everywhere and taking BPO Pics, doing property inspections, etc., which we actually look forward to and enjoy (Please, someone, jump in and tell me this is not really as pathetic as it sounds.) Anyway, we grabbed our list of addresses, our camera, and off we went. About 1:30 in the afternoon, we drove by a property in the worst part of town, stopped, snapped 3 pictures and drove away. A block or two away we looked in the rear view mirror and here comes the car that was parked in front of that house speeding up from behind us. We tried to dodge him by zigzagging down a few side streets but we couldn't lose him. We reached the highway and took off. Then this crazy maniac chases us until he catches up with us, first on one side, then the other, then he pulled in front of us and slammed on his brakes, determined to force us to stop. My husband, being the excellent driver that his is, swerved around him and started driving toward the Sherriff's Dept. By this time, I was on the phone with 911, being instructed to pull over and see if he would just go on. I'm like, "Yeah right. He might have a gun. No way we're stopping, this guy's crazy". So we ended up in this lengthy chase, having to cross a bridge to get to the Sherriff's Dept. At one point he must have figured out where we were headed and he took off. Don't know if the police caught up with him yet or not. They have his address :) and license plate, so one would think so. I suppose we will find out more tomorrow. But with more and more desperate people losing their home and/or rental to foreclosure, it's really getting bad out there. I'm definately going to put this incident in my BPO in regard to describing the neighborhood. Anyone else ever have something like this happen? I am beginning to think twice about accepting BPO's in bad neighborhoods for $50.I do have a friend/client who is a parole officer. She goes with me sometimes to do occupancy checks in bad neighborhoods. She says (In California - where they are all taking a cut in pay) many peace officers will gladly accompany agents on occupancy checks for a small fee when they are off duty. Seems worth it to me! Especially after this experience.
Yes...it get's crazy...we've had dogs sicked on us and people come out and ask what the heck we are doing, at which point we usually say that we are realtors trying to find comps in the nieghborhood and there house is a good candidate and that often alleviates tension, but we didn't even see this guy's rage coming until it was too late. WE both just recently applied for a concealed weapons permit. I made that decision after I got a listing way up in the hills with no cell signal and when to check occupancy, found it was vacant (probably very recently) and there where garbage bags full of Marijuana everywhere. Had they come back for it while I was there...what might have happened? Not willing to be put in that position again without some way to defend myself if necessary.
Wow Barb, that sounds freaky! It is dangerous, definately. My husband I also work together. He was going to a house to take photo's for an exterior BPO that had an address verif requirement, but the address was really hard to see near the entryway. The owner of the home came outside and asked him to stop taking photo's of the house. My husband is extremely mild mannered and handled him with care, but he still managed to be really angry. My husband gave him my phone number and told him to take it up with me as he was really acting crazy! Crazy guy called me, which allowed my husband to get out of the situation. He was convinced we were taking photographs so that we could help people rob him? An exterior BPO. We weren't taking photos of anything that someone could not drive by and see. It was odd.
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