Meet Ethyl Broomhandle

Perhaps you know Ethyl. She’s been around a while, and takes every opportunity to tell you so. The details of her background are a little murky, as she was originally licensed in the real estate Mesozoic Era, but she just prefers the term “35 years in the business” which she repeats a minimum of 1.2 times per minute. There were some years early on when Ethyl was quite a producer, but your computerized MLS records going back to 1998, don’t have her selling much. But she doesn’t tell that to her clients. They just know she’s a “million dollar producer,” a “top office producer” and 3-time WhoopdeDoo award winner. 

She might have had her own brokerage, but it didn’t stay open if she did. She trades on the good name of her office, and if you speak with her, she’s the reason the office produces the numbers it produces. Her office teammates know her to be temperamental and rather arrogant, yet she always seems to have someone who wants to see their listings (how does she do that, anyway?), so they have an uneasy truce. She’ll write an offer one of these days.    

When Ethyl pulls up to the front of your listing Sunday morning in her pristine, leased  Lexus, she invokes her 35 years in the business when you tell her your sellers need more notice than, like, now. Ethyl then loudly asks “they want to sell, don’t they?” When you bring an offer on one of her listings, if it isn’t full price, Ethyl acts as if you just did donuts on her front lawn. She has only 2 moods: annoyed or condescending. 

Every so often, Ethyl does write an offer up on a home for sale, and when asked for a pre approval, she says she’s been doing this 35 years and her buyers are “gold.” Ethyl gets insulted easily; don’t you know who she is? If you do have a deal on the table with Ethyl Broomhandle, she gets very testy when you don’t call her back right away, but she herself is a little challenged with answering emails or her cell phone. Ethyl will often punt a problem the brokers could resolve by saying “let the attorneys handle that” as she stuffs her phone into her purse with her can of Aqua Net on her way into her bridge game. 

Ethyl will never tell you that if it weren’t for her husband, she’d have been out of the business in 1978, 1987, 1992, and 2008. She’s never been the primary bread winner. She steals the odd lead. She doesn’t work very hard. But she’s Ethyl Broomhandle, dammit, she was selling homes when you were in grammar school, and you better show some respect.

Have you met Ethyl?