I have never bought or been involved with buying a house, so I don’t know any details, but here’s how the question came up
I was watching Leave It To Beaver, and the Cleavers are looking for a new home.
June takes the call from the real estate agent.
June: The agent wants to know if we have enough time today to see this new house
Ward: Just tell him to give us the address and we’ll drive by and if we like the outside we’ll call him back and make an appointment to see it.
(June does this, then says to Ward)
June) He says he’s not allowed to do that.
Ward) Tell him to jump in the lake
June) My husband says…He’s not interested… Well OK
(June hangs up then says)
June) He says he’ll phone the owner and try to get permisson for you to drive by and look.
Ward) I’ll have half a mind to just drive by anyway.
June) You don’t have the address
Ward) Oh.
--------->
So I’m thinking other than the agent wanting to be there to put some pressure on the Cleavers, is there any real reason why the agent wouldn’t allow the person to drive by and look.
Or is this a case of something written into a sitcom for comic effect?
It must have been written for comic effect, but it wasn’t very funny.
The only reason you couldn’t drive by a house for sale would be if it was in a gated community. Even then, they have open houses like every other house seller.
Why on earth are you watching “Leave It To Beaver,” anyway?
I was thinking that maybe the agent would not want to give him the address because he worried that Ward might try to stiff him by either getting a different agent or dealing directly with the seller
I have to imagine that the real estate game has changed somewhat in the almost 50 years since Leave it to Beaver was on. So you’ll have to settle for some hypotheticals. Because it was the owner’s permission that was needed, maybe the owner wanted to make sure that the lawn was mowed, the obnoxious neighbors with the barking dog were not in evidence, the garbage cans were put away, and that everything was done to improve curb appeal. Possibly also wanted to avoid the possibility of people driving by and then asking for a showing at an inconvenient time.
As someone else already mentioned, the agent also probably has an interest in making sure that he/she showed the place rather than having the client look and try to strike a deal with the owner.
If it were on any show but Leave It To Beaver, I’d suggest that the real estate agent wanted to give the Cleavers the once-over to determine whether or not they were…“right” for the neighborhood.
This is an extension of a pretty standard practice. It’s considered bad form to drop by the house unannounced. You have to go through the agent. I got yelled at (sorta) more than once by my agent for going by the house without her permission/accompaniment. It’s a privacy issue. The seller doesn’t want people coming by and ruining his personal time with business. And the agent respects that. It’s not that the agent can’t give out the address. It’s that it’s looked down on in the real estate community.
Oh come on. Everywhere I’ve ever lived, all my life (which encompasses the '50s), people who had houses for sale put SIGNS out in front. Were those signs for the benefit of the neighbors? No. They were for the benefit of people driving by looking for new homes.
Exception: I believe when we lived in Santa Barbara that signs were prohibited. I don’t think that’s the case any more. Obviously, this is a community issue. But as long as it’s a public street anyone can still drive by.
You still have to go through the agent to get inside. When our houses were up for sale and people dropped by wanting to look at the place, we said no. You don’t want a constant parade. The real estate agents at least qualified people so we knew with 85% certainty that they were not just casing the joint.
Since this is almost IMHO, I’ll take a stab and suggest that the real estate agents want an opportunity to “work their magic,” in smooth-talking prospective customers, transforming small into “cozy” and so forth.
And the ever popular quote before they went on that camping trip: “June, I’m going downstairs to pack the boys’ fudge”
Yeah I know, it’s a little forced, but when we told the above joke it was in the form of “You the two dirtiest things ever said on tv was on Leave it to Beaver?”
