Real-Estate Agents Recall Clients Who Were There to Spy, Not Buy – The Wall Street Journal

Q: Have you ever shown a listing to someone whose real purpose was to spy on the people living there?

Michael Lynch

Real-estate agent, The Corcoran Group, Bridgehampton, N.Y.

I worked for 27 years as a hair colorist in Manhattan at some of the top Madison Avenue salons before going into real estate. Those are the people that either have homes in the Hamptons or want homes in the Hamptons, so it was a very good customer base to tap into. A lot of my hair-color clients transitioned into real-estate clients over the years, and this client was one of them.

She contacted me and said, “There’s a house in East Hampton that I would like to take a look at.” It was beautifully maintained, with an asking price just under $3 million. But one thing that was odd was that she and her boyfriend had specifically told me that they didn’t want a house with a pool, and this house had a pool.

Another thing that was unusual was that she brought a friend with her to see it. Most of the time when I showed her a house, it was with her boyfriend. They had been a couple for a while, probably 10 years.