Dan Kois at Slate couldn't resist interviewing Matt Godbey, the agent selling a goth'd out single family home in Baltimore.
Slate: When you have a house with decor as unusual as this, do you try to get the sellers to neutralize it a little? Or do you just embrace it?
Matt Godbey: Well, you should have seen it before. He somewhat neutralized it. I told him: I've been doing this for 33 years, and I know what sells. Some of the things in there, I told him, will frighten people. There were about 25 mannequins in the basement and some upstairs.
Mannequins?!
His thing is horror movies. It's not a cult thing. And I can relate—I've seen quite a few of those movies myself. He removed the mannequins. He did what he could, but between getting the house ready for sale and working six days a week, it's just about all he could do by himself. Some of the pictures are fastened to the wall, and he said he'll have to tear them out and plaster and paint. But sometimes you don't get 100 percent of what you ask a seller to do.
It is good to see that Mr. Godbey can find a positive twist on anything:
What's the most sellable feature of the house, do you think? What do you lead with when you're telling people about it?
Oh, there's quite a bit. Unusual for that neighborhood, there's a double wide driveway, so parking is easier. And you can access the garage from the front or the back—it connects to the alley. It's a two-car garage.
