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I was cleaning out my desk this morning and ran across an old quote that I had written down.  I'm sorry I didn't write the author's name down so he/she can get credit.

"The less time you spend in other people's business, other people's problems, and other people's drama, the more time you'll have for your own success."

I thought about that in relation to top producers in real estate and other industries.  They don't spend a lot of time chatting around the water cooler.  They don't spend a lot of time spreading rumors.  They don't spend a lot of time on office gossip.  They spend their time succeeding.

One of the things that I'm noticing when I show homes is how many of them do not have Supra lockboxes but are using combination lockboxes instead.  With the swelling of the inventory I'm sure that listing agents are running out of Supra lockboxes to install.  They're available for purchase from our board for about $125.  It's cheaper and easier to go to Home Depot and get a combo for $30.  The problem is that the cheapo combo isn't covered by our E&O insurance so the agents using combo's are taking a big risk.

Some of the combo lockboxes are pretty old and have been around as long as...well, the agents who use them.  What's amusing is that about half of them use the default combination making it even more risky for the agent and seller.  That combo is SPI just in case you're wondering.

It really is a sign of the times and the growing inventory when agents run out of secure lockboxes to put on their listings.

I was showing listings last night for another agent who was unavailable.  She set up all the appointments so all I had to do was drive the clients around to five homes.  She's a friend and now she owes me a favor as well :)  

The market here in Anne Arundel County Maryland can best be characterized as "saturated."  The current home inventory is about three times higher than it was just 2 - 3 years ago during the height of the sellers market.  In this type of market a listing agent should never miss an opportunity to allow a house to be shown, ever.  There is no excuse in my book.

At the third house I searched for the lockbox...in vain.  After several minutes I called the listing agent's cell phone and she seemed annoyed because she was out of state on vacation.  The lockbox was supposed to be by the electric service panel and it wasn't.  I was standing in front of the electric service panel and there definitely was no lockbox.  

The listing agent said "I thought that would happen".  Huh!  You thought what would happen.  This property has been on the market for two months.  What happened to the lockbox?  I'm sure there's a story behind it but quite frankly I was only interested in showing the house.  She told me to call the owner and have him let us in the property.  As it turned out the owner wasn't available and since there was no way to legally get into the property the buyers decided to do the best thing...next.  There certainly isn't any shortage of homes to show.

This one didn't get shown last night and the buyers won't be going back any time soon, if ever.  A missed opportunity, you bet.  I'm not naive to believe that this was the house that the buyers were going to purchase.  We'll never know though, will we?