When open houses get weird

From the gross to the dangerous, real estate agents dish on the ways open houses can go very wrong.

By Rachel Kurzius

May 21, 2024 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

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The whole point of an open house is that anyone can come. Still, Dana Jackins, a real estate agent with Stansfield Signature, was pretty concerned when one guest slithered up to the door of a listing in Vienna, Va., right as the event was starting.

“One visitor for the open house came to me in the kitchen and whispered: ‘There’s a snake. I think it’s a copperhead,’” Jackins recalls.

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