But what you bring with you to the open house says just as much about you as the house says about its owners! Are you a hyper-prepared dealmaker or a casual browser just here for the free cookies?

Here are 9 (slightly exaggerated) homebuyer personalities, based upon what they bring to an open house:

1) A Clipboard

You’re not only super organized, you’re a serious buyer! You’ve mapped out the entire day of open houses you want to hit, and have a printout of each one in chronological order. You will be an amazing buyer who never misses a deadline and has a smooth transaction from start to finish.

2) A Measuring Tape

You have a ridiculously large piece of furniture that you’re really attached to, and are concerned about whether it will fit exactly where you want it in your new home. You will look at dozens (if not hundreds!) of homes that never quite have the perfect space or place to put it, and will eventually decide that you can just buy new furniture that fits in a house you eventually fall in love with.

3) A Huge Tote Bag

Open houses are a great place to cash in on the free giveaways, like branded water bottles, pens, and keychains. You’ve come well prepared to load up on any freebies, and possibly a handful of the freshly baked cookies sitting right there on the kitchen island.

4) Nothing

You’re a neighbor who just wanted to take the opportunity to “see what they’ve done with the place,” and probably chime in on how they’re asking too much, and will never get close to the asking price.

However, you’ll also mention that your house is a lot nicer, which means you could probably sell for 10% more than they’re asking… But you’re not going anywhere anytime soon. You’re staying put. No plans to move. OK, well, good luck selling this place. I have to head back home before the game starts.

5) A Fancy Cup of Coffee

You’re just starting to think about buying a house. You had no real plans for the day and decided to go for a drive, grab a cup of coffee, and just take a peek at a few open houses… just to see what’s out there.

6) You Keep Your Sunglasses on Inside

Unless the natural light spilling into the house is as amazing as the listing says it is, you’re hiding behind those glasses hoping the agent doesn’t recognize you from a few years back when you asked them to show you houses for 3 months straight, and then ghosted them. Or maybe you’re just a celebrity.

7) A Toddler

Oh, you’re serious about buying a house! Because nobody brings a toddler into someone else’s home to let them unleash their terror without good reason. But it could also be that the kid won’t nap and you just needed to get out of your own house for a freaking minute of sanity and adult conversation. But good luck with that while you’re trying to wrangle a wriggling kid in your arms.

8) Your Dog

Whatever house you buy needs to fit the needs of your four-legged friend as much (if not more) than your own, in order for you to seriously consider it.

9) Your Agent’s Business Card

You’re the dream buyer—loyal, professional, and ready to make sure the agent hosting the open house respects that relationship. They’ll respect it… but that doesn’t mean they won’t wish you were their client!

The post What 9 Things You Might Bring to an Open House Reveal About You as a Home Buyer appeared first on Lighter Side of Real Estate.

To outsiders, high-rise living can certainly seem glamorous — picture stunning views, high-end interiors, and the prestige of an address that practically screams “success.” Spoiler alert: They’re not all glamorous, and living in one comes with some unique challenges that you might not imagine, if you’re used to living in a single-family home.

Here are 8 things that people living in a high-rise or skyscraper have to be comfortable living with:

1) It can take a while just to get out of your building…

If you live on a lower floor, the stairs can be a great way to get your daily steps in, as well as avoid long waits for the elevator. But if you live on the higher floors, you either need to be down for some serious cardio, or down with waiting for an elevator to pick you up, especially during peak hours when everyone is coming and going.

2) You need to be prepared to make small talk…

In suburbia, you can strategically avoid making conversation with your neighbors by waiting until the coast is clear for you to make a dash to your car or into your home. But if you live in a highrise, good luck not bumping into someone who wants to chat in your hallway, on the elevator, at the mailboxes, or in the lobby every time you come and go.

3) Carrying groceries can be even more challenging…

No matter how skilled you are at carrying every single grocery bag in one trip from the car to your kitchen in a single-family setting, you probably wouldn’t be able to duplicate that feat as easily living in a highrise. You really need to think through how much you can carry from the store all the way up to your kitchen, before filling a grocery cart.

4) Taking out the trash isn’t always easy…

Some highrises have trash chutes on each floor that you can just walk down the hall and toss it into and let gravity take it to the basement. But some don’t, and you need to lug bags of garbage all the way down. Think about that the next time you groan about having to wheel your garbage cans out to the street on collection day!

5) You need to take a walk in order to take your dog for a walk…

Letting your dog do its business in the hallway or lobby is frowned upon, so in order to take your dog for a walk, you need to take the trek all the way through the building, just to get outside. If you and your pooch prefer a parklike setting, you’ll also need to walk to the nearest one, which can be quite a hike in some urban areas.

6) If you have kids, it’s not easy for them to play outside…

Not that kids play outside like they used to, but if you live in a single-family house, it’s usually a lot easier for them to do so when they get the urge. Kids who grow up in a highrise might have a great view of some parks in the distance, but getting to them is a whole other story.

7) Sometimes your view isn’t so grand…

Living in a highrise can mean looking out at some amazing views! But it can also mean looking out at the side of another building…

8) You need to be cool with your building swaying in the wind…

Architects and engineers design highrises to sway, and they’re almost always moving a little bit. But when the wind whips up, residents really feel it, and can often hear the building groaning and creaking.

The post 8 Ways Living in a High Rise or Skyscraper Is So Different from Living in a Single Family Home appeared first on Lighter Side of Real Estate.

It’s probably not even possible to shock an agent…

If you just read that and thought, “Game on!” and want some creative ways to test that theory, here are ten ways you can shock (and delight!) an agent the next time you need to hire one:

1) “I saw your info on my grandmother’s fridge!”

The next time you need to hire an agent, go to your grandmother’s house (or the house of any other older relative) and take a peek at the side of their fridge. There you will find a calendar magnet from 2018 with a real estate agent’s face and contact info on it. Call that agent and say, “I saw your info on my grandma’s fridge and need you to sell my house.”

2) An Office Walk-In? Is This the 1990s?

The internet and cell phones have made it almost pointless for an agent to take a shift sitting at the front desk in case a potential client walks in, yet some agents still do it to this day despite the fact that no agent has probably gotten a client that way since 1999. So the next time you’re in the market to buy a house, walk into your local real estate office unannounced, ask the agent sitting at the front desk to work with you, and watch them party like it’s 1999.

3) The Open House Job Interview

Agents certainly meet people at open houses who end up becoming clients. But the client usually came to see the house, not the agent, and they just ended up hitting it off.

So if you want to really shock an agent, walk into a random open house and wait for them to say, “Welcome. Feel free to take a look around, and if you have any questions about the house, feel free to ask.”

As soon as they get those words out, tell them you didn’t come to see the house, you came to hire whatever agent happened to be hosting the open house and ask them to prepare an exclusive buyer’s agency agreement. If they don’t faint on the spot, tell them they passed the test and hire them, because that’s a sign that the agent can handle even the most shocking turn of events.

4) Winning Facebook’s Hunger Games

Make a post in your local Facebook group asking for real estate recommendations. Within minutes, dozens of comments will flood in from people raving about their favorite agent, and plenty of agents promoting themselves. Don’t focus on any agent who receives tons of reactions or recommendations. Find one who gets lost in the sea of all the other 82 agent names on the thread and call them—one who basically said, “Hey, I’m an agent in the area and I could use some business.”

Reply to their comment saying “I’d like to hire you, please DM me to set up a time to meet…” and immediately turn the commenting off on the post. Not only will that particular agent be flabbergasted, but so will every single one of the other 82 agents. (Especially the ones who got tons of love from the locals in the comment section!)

5) Door Knocking Pays Off (For Once)

If you wait long enough, one day an agent will knock on your door trying to drum up some business. The agent will likely be braced for you to either pretend you’re not home; answer the door and yell at them; or (at best) politely tell them you’re not thinking of buying a home in the near future, but you’ll keep them in mind when you do.

Unbeknownst to them, you have put off your plans to buy or sell a house until the moment an agent had the gumption to show up at your door and knock! Swing the door open and say, “Oh thank goodness, I’ve been waiting for you to show up to list my house! Come on in! I hope you brought the paperwork…”

6) Found on Google—Without Paying for It

The next time you need an agent, go to Google and type in “real estate agent near me” into the search bar. Then scroll way down to the bottom and click to the next page. Do this until you reach the 6th or 7th page of search results. Call whatever agent appears that many pages in and when they ask how you found them, tell them “I Googled ‘best agents near me,’ and you came up.” They will be flattered, but floored that they came up at all, since they probably haven’t spent a dime on SEO or building a web presence to show up that many pages deep in search results.

7) A Mind-Changing Meme

Let’s face it, you’re either friends with, or related to a real estate agent. Deep down the hope, pray, and kind of expect you to work with them. But that doesn’t always happen… Agents often get upset when they find out a friend or family member worked with another agent to buy or sell a house. But by then, it’s too late and there’s not much they can do, other than post self-therapeutic memes about it.

So the next time you’re in the market to buy or sell a house, reach out to the one you’re closest to and say that you were going to hire another agent, but you saw a real estate meme that made you realize the error of your ways before it was too late!

The post Real Estate Agents Are Hard to Shock, but Here Are 7 Ways You Might Be Able to Pull It Off appeared first on Lighter Side of Real Estate.

This might not sound like a big deal for naturally tidy folks—it’s just Tuesday. But for everyone else, keeping a house show-ready feels like landing a full-time (non-paying) job doing something they have zero qualifications for.

Here’s a peek at 6 struggles many home sellers know all too well, but the naturally tidy ones will be surprised to know are even considered a struggle:

1) “Tidy” is not the same as “hiding the evidence.”

Naturally tidy people probably can’t grasp the art of shoving clutter into drawers, closets, or random tote bags before a showing. But if you’ve ever stuffed an entire day’s worth of dishes into the oven because the dishwasher is already too full, you know the struggle.

2) Kids and pets are living chaos machines.

Ask a tidy person how they’re always so prepared for last minute showings when they have kids and pets, and they’ll smile and calmly reply, “I just have a system.” Heck, they probably even get their kids and pets to lend a hand picking up around the house! For everyone else, keeping a house pristine with a toddler, a teen, or a Terrier (forget about it if you have all three!) is like trying to stop Niagara Falls with a paper towel.

3) Closets are not infinite voids of storage magic.

If you can’t relate to pushing your back up against the closet door until you hear the latch click… you might be a tidy person. While tidy people hope a buyer will open their closet to witness how much storage space they have, even if it isn’t a walk-in closet, everyone else just hopes the buyer isn’t too injured when the door flings open and an avalanche of their belongings hits them in the face.

4) Dust exists everywhere, even in places you forgot existed.

Tidy folks seem to have an actual schedule for dusting baseboards and ceiling fans. So when it comes time to sell their house, they miss out on how fun it is to wipe dust that’s deep enough to actually measure with a ruler off of the ceiling fan.

5) Things don’t always have a designated spot.

Neat freaks naturally have “homes” for their belongings and it looks like there’s a place for everything, and everything’s in its place. But a lot of sellers have vague zones: “keys somewhere on the counter,” “shoes near the door,” and “coat on a chair next to the door where the shoes are near.” Keeping a house show-ready for many homeowners means trying to break these habits, and learning that maybe junk drawers are not, in fact, an acceptable life strategy for everything you own.

6) Keeping a house “drop-in ready” is stressful and exhausting!

For naturally tidy people, it’s no big deal, it’s just how they live. For everyone else, the constant threat of a last-minute showing feels like defusing a bomb. Every “We’ll be there in 15 minutes” text isn’t just stressful, it’s an exhausting sprint to pick up rogue socks, frantically vacuum the living room, and a desperate dash through the laundry room to make sure there aren’t any unmentionables in a pile by the washing machine.

The post 6 Realities Naturally Tidy People Don’t Get About Keeping a House Show-Ready appeared first on Lighter Side of Real Estate.

But before we get too excited and start cranking out houses like oversized Lego sets, let’s ask an important question… Will concrete printers come with the same frustrations as regular printers?

Anyone who’s wrestled with a paper jam or begged a printer to stop demanding magenta for a black-and-white document knows all too well that printers often have a mind of their own!

So let’s examine how 7 common issues people have with regular printers could really make a mess of things if it happened with the ones they use to print houses:

1) What if Fixing Paper Jams Isn’t Your Jam?

What if you’re halfway through printing a three-bedroom ranch and the machine stops? Perhaps it’s the concrete equivalent to a paper jam!

You could look at the control panel or open up the machine to see if something is lodged inside. But the pro move here is to walk away until someone else comes along and tries to use it, realizes the machine is jammed, and fixes it.

2) You Can’t Just Run To Staples for a New Cartridge…

It’s a total pain in the neck having to run to the nearest office supply store when you run out of ink mid-print using a traditional printer. But you’d wish it were that easy to get refills for your 3D printer if you run out of concrete in the middle of printing a kitchen!

3) Magenta Is Low!!!

Regular printers have a ridiculous obsession with the color magenta! You could print 99.8% of things strictly in black and white, yet somehow magenta is always low, and it doesn’t want to let you continue printing until you address this urgent matter. Despite the fact that concrete houses will all come out some shade of gray, it wouldn’t be surprising if these new fangled printers also insist on taking a break until you feed it some magenta.

4) Your Home is Buffering

Everyone’s been through the experience of trying to print some important documents and your computer says the job is “in progress” yet nothing is being printed. Unfortunately you’ve got like three quarters of a piece of paper stuck coming out the printer, so you’re stuck having to choose between trying to be patient and wait it out, or trying in vain to cancel the print job. If this happens when you’re printing a concrete house, you might as well just skip ahead to the ultimate solution, which usually ends up being to just reboot the entire computer.

5) Starting Update…NOW!

Software updates are necessary from time to time, but they never seem to happen at a convenient time! Hopefully any concrete printer updates will happen before it starts printing a house, but if not, hopefully it won’t take the half an hour they always seem to take when you’re in a rush.

6) When the Cancel Button Kicks in Too Late…

Sometimes there’s a long lag between when you click the cancel button on the printer, and when it decides to finally follow through with the command. But by then you’ve already hit the print button a few more times, and now you’ve got three sets of the same thing in the printing queue. Not a big deal when you’re talking a few extra sheets of paper, but having three extra walls printing out of a concrete printer probably will be!

7) Goes Rogue and Prints Blanks

Ever had a printer randomly spit out 50 blank pages for no reason? Now imagine that, but with concrete. Just a big pile of windowless, doorless slabs of concrete piling up on the lawn…

While printed houses hold tremendous promise, let’s hope the tech wizards behind them have learned from the woes of their desktop counterparts.

The post What Could Go Wrong With 3D Printing Houses? Here Are 7 Funny (And Relatable) Possibilities… appeared first on Lighter Side of Real Estate.

Hey, sellers can ask however much they want for their house! However, it’s only worth what a buyer is willing to pay for it…

The owner believes the property’s fame and turning it into a themed vacation rental or a museum will justify the cost. Solid ideas, but in order for a buyer to drop that kind of dough, it’ll help for buyers to have as many reasons as possible.

So here’s a list of 4 ways buying the legendary Albuquerque home could be worth every penny she’s hoping to get:

1) Never Pay for Pizza Again

With fans regularly reenacting Walter White’s iconic rooftop toss, you might never need to buy pizza—or even groceries—again. As long as you’re cool with eating only pizza every meal, just keep a ladder handy, collect your frequent pizza deliveries (without even having to tip the driver, mind you!), and enjoy the endless free pies being tossed onto your roof. Considering how the price of food only goes up over time, this perk could really add up over the years.

2) The Crawl Space Could Be Crawling With Cash

Walter White hid cash all over that house! Who’s to say the props team didn’t miss a few bundles? Whether it’s behind the insulation in the garage, in space-saver bags in the crawl space, there’s always the chance you’ll strike gold—or at least a duffel bag of cash.

3) Maybe There Will Be a Sequel!

Maybe, just maybe, the creators of the show will film another season of Breaking Bad. Perhaps a sequel showing his son taking over his dad’s business, or a prequel showing how Walter became a science whiz when he was a teen. If so, owning this house could pay off big time. Production crews would likely shell out serious cash to film on location. But honestly, wouldn’t you pay them to bring us another season or two?

4) You Won’t Get Suckered Into Any Door-To-Door Sales Pitches

Forget about dealing with pushy door-to-door salespeople. Anytime someone knocks on your door, you can channel your inner Heisenberg and yell, “I AM THE ONE WHO KNOCKS!” It’s intimidating, iconic, and likely to send them running. Think of all the money you’ll save avoiding unnecessary purchases—replacement windows, solar panels, overpriced knives, or subscription services you didn’t need in the first place. (Although you may want to take a peek and make sure it isn’t a Girl Scout selling cookies… You never want to pass up a chance to buy those!)

The post 4 Creative Ways Diehard Breaking Bad Fans Could Justify Spending $4M on Walter White’s House appeared first on Lighter Side of Real Estate.

On the bright side, they may be the solution to the housing shortage! There’s been some talk about converting failing and abandoned malls into residential living developments.

But before they go stripping the malls of everything that made them fun to walk around, let’s take a look at 10 things they should consider keeping to make living in a converted JCPenney store more appealing:

1) Mall Cops

People might think mall cops are a bit of a joke, but wouldn’t it be better to at least have someone with a little authority to keep people in line?

2) “You Are Here” Directories

Think about how handy it’d be for visitors to be able to walk up to a directory and look up where you live, in relation to where they’re at in the building! Heck, malls can be so disorienting, even residents might need to use it on occasion to remember where they live….

3) Water Fountains

There’s just something soothing about the splashing water in a mall fountain. But they’re also a great place to throw the annoying spare change in your pocket, or fish some out if you’re just shy of the amount you need to grab a Cinnabon in the food court.

4) Food Courts

Imagine stepping out of your apartment and having a food court just steps away — think of all the money you’d save on UberEats and DoorDash!

5) Randomly Placed Massage Chairs

Buying yourself a reclining massage chair for your own home can be a pricey endeavor, but strolling down to the lobby with a handful of quarters to use a coin-operated one when you’re in need of a good kneading is certainly within budget.

6) Quarter Rides and the Indoor Playground

Kids (and the young at heart) would appreciate developers leaving the playgrounds intact, as well as those old school rides you can pay a quarter to ride for like a half a minute.

7) Mannequins

They should repurpose the mannequins by including several in each residential unit. Residents can use them as a way to store clothes they didn’t wear long enough to put in the wash, but aren’t clean enough to put back in the closet either.

8) Escalators

Escalators work even when they’re out of order! Why take them out only to build a set of stairs, when an escalator can just become a set of stairs when it breaks down? And they’re way more fun than an elevator…

9) Muzak

Keeping the subtle background noise of songs that you know and sing along to, but wouldn’t necessarily choose to listen to on Spotify, is a great way to support the Muzak artists, and pipe in a whole vibe to the environment.

10) Pictures With Santa

No more having to go to the mall to tell Santa what you want for Christmas… he’s right outside your door! If the line is too long, you can always just head back to your pad and wait until it dies down.

The post 10 Things They Shouldn’t Get Rid of When Converting Malls Into Residential Living appeared first on Lighter Side of Real Estate.

Recently, mysterious drones have been spotted zipping through the skies above New Jersey and beyond, causing plenty of confusion and even a bit of fear.

People have been coming up with theories ranging from “secret government surveillance” to “alien reconnaissance missions.” Unfortunately, they’re all just that—theories.

While it seems like anything is possible, everyone could use a little reassurance and some hope that there’s an explanation that doesn’t cause concern…

Like, maybe it’s just real estate agents!

So, let’s give our imaginations a moment to calm down, put those conspiracy theories to rest, and explore 7 real estate-related possibilities behind these mysterious drones:

1) It’s an agent trying to max out the number of listing photos…

Some agents love to show off their listings with as many photos as possible, and now that many MLS systems and listing sites allow up to 100 images, perhaps some agents are just trying to find new and unique shots to take. Sunsets, moonlit skies, cloudy skies, streetlight shadows, a 400-foot aerial shot, a 30,000-foot view—you name it! If it takes a drone flying at 2 a.m. to capture the perfect angle, so be it.

2) It’s a buyer trying to find a house before it even gets listed…

There just aren’t enough houses on the market to satisfy the demand, and buyers are looking for any advantage they can to avoid a bidding war. Maybe they’re being flown by a tech-savvy buyer who’s using drones to tail listing agents en route to listing appointments so they can get a leg up on the competition and put in an offer before the ink is even dry on the listing agreement!

3) It’s an agent trying to recover open house balloons…

In the past, “open house” balloons floating away into the sky wasn’t a big deal. But a lot of people frown on it now, because they pollute the environment and can harm wildlife. So it could be an agent trying to avoid bad press or a fine by using drones to find and retrieve some balloons with their branding on them.

4) It’s how those Zestimate numbers hover over a house…

You know how Zestimates just seem to hover over homes on the website? Well, maybe they aren’t just numbers on a screen and it’s the drones that are projecting the values like a hologram over a house when someone is looking it up online.

5) It’s an HOA trying to find ways to fine people…

HOA’s are always looking for new ways to enforce their rules! Did you forget to mow your lawn? Did you install an unapproved basketball hoop? Are those flowers hanging on your porch an approved color? The drones are the perfect tool for catching violations without having to patrol the community on foot, or rely on a nosy neighbor to report the offender.

6) It’s a sophisticated group of squatters…

Squatters go to extreme lengths to avoid paying rent or buying a place the honest way. So, it’s not out of the realm of possibility that a group of high-tech squatters is using drones to find unoccupied homes and keep tabs on potential targets.

7) Or maybe it is aliens…

Considering we Earthlings are scoping out the potential to live on the Moon or Mars, it’s possible that it could be extraterrestrials looking at Earth as an alternative place to live. Well, the good news is, once they see how much houses sell for on Earth, they’ll probably disappear pretty quickly.

The post What Are These Nighttime Drones Really Up To? 7 Real Estate Theories That Make Sense (Sort Of) appeared first on Lighter Side of Real Estate.

TV personality and real estate veteran, Barbara Corcoran, recently shared that the most important home feature for a long, happy marriage is for couples to have separate bedrooms.

It’s a trend that’s becoming increasingly more common amongst married couples, and it sparks an interesting question—what other home features could help couples keep the peace?

Here’s a (somewhat) tongue-in-cheek list of 5 home features that could save a relationship—or at least make cohabitation a little less dramatic:

1) A Two-Zone House

It’s all-too-common for one partner to want the thermostat set to “Tropical,” while the other wants to feel like they’re wintering in Antarctica. So just split the house into climates using a dual-zone thermostat. With separate climate controls, you can each live in your weather fantasy without waging a daily “cold war” over the dial.

2) Separate Kitchen Sinks

Pretty much every couple has a clean freak and a… well, a person who annoys the heck out of the clean freak. One keeps the sink spotless, the other has perfected the art of leaving a single bowl with dried cereal cemented to the bottom. With separate sinks, you can each live your own truth. Your clean sink stays pristine, and their “science experiment” stays out of sight.

3) Two Dishwashers

Dishwasher debates are a tale as old as time. One person has a meticulously optimized system (plates face inward, obviously), while the other seems to think the little slots and sections of the dishwasher are just there as a suggestion. But with separate dishwashers, the neat-nic doesn’t have to constantly reorganize the other one’s mess again, and their partner never has to hear how “your way wastes water and doesn’t get the dishes entirely clean” anymore.

4) A “Safe” Room

Sometimes, you just need to hide. Whether it’s to escape a passive-aggressive comment about laundry or dodge an ill-timed “Are you in the mood?”, a designated “safe” room is your sanctuary. Bonus points if it’s stocked with snacks, noise-canceling headphones, and a lock. Consider it a tiny timeout for grown-ups.

5) Soundproof Bathroom Walls

Some things are better left unheard—like your partner belting out Livin’ on a Prayer in the shower or, um, “other” bathroom-related sounds. Soundproofing ensures you’ll never have to listen to whatever’s going on in there. It also allows the person on the inside of the bathroom to legitimately claim they truly never heard you any of the 7 times you asked how much longer they’d be in there, and whether they were planning on helping to put the kids to bed, because we’re all tired you know…

The post 5 Funny Home Features to Help Couples Live (And Love) Together in Peace appeared first on Lighter Side of Real Estate.

It starts out small…

A toothbrush here, a phone charger there. Next thing you know, they’ve claimed your favorite spot on the couch and are raiding the fridge to eat food you paid for.

Before you know it, your roommate’s significant other has morphed into a full-fledged tenant, without paying a dime in rent.

Ideally you can set some boundaries about how much time this non-paying tenant is allowed to occupy your abode by chatting with your roommate and their mate. But if talking it out hasn’t worked, and diplomacy isn’t your strong suit, it’s time to unleash your inner creative genius.

Here are 8 ways to gently (or not-so-gently) make life just uncomfortable enough for the freeloading “plus-one” to pack their bags:

1) Steal Their Hot Showers

Figure out their shower routines and jump in right before they usually do. Use all the hot water like you’re starring in a shampoo commercial. Bonus points if you leave the bathroom fogged up like a sauna.

2) Interrupt Their Toilet Time

Knock-knock. Who’s there? It’s you, every single time they try to take a “number two.” Pound on the door immediately after they’ve situated themselves upon the throne, and repeat every 48-53 seconds. That’ll give them enough time to think you’ve given up, and then bring them right back to reality. It’ll get to a point where they won’t want to be anywhere near your apartment when they have to go, which will hopefully make them go home…wherever that is.

3) Eat Their Leftovers

When they stash their favorite takeout in the fridge, swoop in and eat just enough of it to make it not even worth having for lunch or that midnight snack they were dreaming about. Do that often enough and they won’t want to be around late enough to have a midnight snack!

4) Change the Wi-Fi Password

Them: “Why is the Wi-Fi down?”
You: “Oh, it’s not, I just changed the password. It’s “NotYourHouseYouDontPayRentLeave”
It’s a subtle way to say exactly what’s on your mind.

5) Use Psychological Germ Warfare

You don’t actually have to use their toothbrush because, well, that’s gross… Which is exactly why just casually suggesting that you keep using it will drive them nuts! Watch them spiral into a germaphobic panic while silently cursing their life choices, and packing their toiletry bag to move out.

6) Turn the Couple Into a “Throuple”

Why stop at third-wheeling when you can fully commit to the bit? Start casually inserting yourself into their relationship. Plop down between them on the couch and say, “What’s our plan for date night?” Hang up a few photos of the three of you with captions like, “I love us!” The only downside is this may get them both to leave the apartment, leaving you without a roommate. But hey, if they’re on the lease, they’re on the hook for paying rent, right?!

7) Practice Loud and Obnoxious Hobbies

Always wanted to learn the bagpipes? Now’s the perfect time. Whether it’s mastering the recorder, perfecting your drum solo, or interpretive dancing like nobody’s watching, do it loudly and consistently whenever they’re home. If you’re feeling generous, offer to put on a nightly private concert for them.

8) Date Their Ex

There’s no better way to make things uncomfortable than bringing their past into the present. Start chatting up one of their exes, then casually invite them over. The worse their breakup was, the better it is for you, so do a little digging and set your sights on the one who broke their heart the most.

The post 8 Hilariously Passive-Aggressive Ways to Get Your Roommate’s Freeloading Significant Other to Stop Staying Over So Much appeared first on Lighter Side of Real Estate.