How not to steal a listing, Kiwi-style

Had your fill of leftovers yet? Then chew on these tidbits from my first-ever international edition:

• For sale by ... : A real estate agent is in trouble in New Zealand because he was apparently a little too eager to obtain a listing.

The agent was recently fined the equivalent of about $1,100 by real estate licensing officials and ordered to attend an ethics course after a family in the town of Otaki, near Wellington, discovered that he had put his own “for sale” sign in their yard, directly in front of their “for sale by owner” sign.

The agent, who had been licensed for about two weeks when the alleged offense occurred, defended his action by saying he thought the homeowners had agreed to list it with him, though, admittedly, they neglected to sign that important little piece of paper that makes a listing official, according to media reports.

The homeowners, who lived in another city, told regulators they were puzzled when they stopped getting phone inquiries about the house. They came home to visit it several months later and found the agent’s sign in the yard.

• The numbers game: A Canadian suburb is wrestling with a growing number of owners with homes for sale who are asking for an official change of address in order not to appear “unlucky.”

Officials in the town of Markham, outside Toronto, say agents and homeowners in a largely Asian neighborhood who have the number 4 in their street addresses are seeking to change the numbers because that number is perceived as bad luck by some Chinese.

The mayor of Markham said it would like to halt the changes because they set a precedent that could get out of hand if, say, other cultures start making the requests based on their notions of luck — good or bad.

• Oh, to be in England: A man described by British media as a “lifelong thief” was ordered by a court to sell his home in order to raise the equivalent of about $79,000 to repay his victims.

However, he recently was allowed more time to raise the money because the housing market has been so unkind to property values.

The man said his Manchester-area house had been worth about $151,000 a few years ago, but since trying to sell it he’d received offers for only about $63,000, not enough to meet his obligation.

The judge, apparently thinking the market is going to improve, gave the man an extra three months, and he cut the bill to about $60,000. If the man doesn’t come up with the money by then he’ll do jail time, and still will owe the money upon his release.

• Where the sidewalk ends: When plain-old prose sounds too, well, prosaic, maybe a real estate listing could stand to read more like poetry. Literally. A real estate brokerage in Brighton, England, recently sent its agents to a poetry-writing workshop in order to learn how to add some flourishes to property descriptions and to avoid cliches, according to the Guardian newspaper.

Nobody said the rewritten phrases had to be good poetry.

Examples of what a little learning hath wrought, from their recast listing verbiage:

“The first thing you eye is the sea meeting the sky / like old comrades, they share a warm embrace.” (Meaning: House has ocean views.)

“Green like the colour of grass that has just two weeks rain / Gold like the colour of the Sahara desert.” (Green-and-gold color scheme.)

Got a few poetic reinterpretations of your own? Here’s a starting point for you: Handyman special; overlooks the freeway.

Umberger writes for the Chicago Tribune.