“Get out of the house and take your clothes off!,” was the last thing REO Broker Ed Manfredi expected his wife to say when he arrived home from work.
Manfredi had just listed a quaint, 1800’s-style, single-family home in an urban area of Rhode Island.

After an appraiser came to the home, Manfredi received a call from him saying, “You really need to do something about all those red bugs in the basement. When I came outside, they were all over my pant leg.”
Although Manfredi didn’t notice the bugs while onsite, he did suspect a few bats had made a home for themselves in the basement. He also was pretty certain something suspicious had flown past his head.
On the same day, another colleague phoned Manfredi, asking him if he knew the home was infested with fleas.
Manfredi didn’t notice the fleas at the residence, but apparently they snuck up on him. When he arrived home from work, he noticed a few fleas lingering in his back seat. He immediately called his wife and asked her to pick up insect bomb.
When she asked why, Manfredi quickly explained and was not prepared for her very honest reaction. “I hope you’re not in the house,” she exclaimed. “Get out of the house now and take your clothes off!”

Rather than flash the neighborhood by ridding himself of his potentially flea-ridden clothes, Manfredi sprayed down his truck and learned to see the humor in the incident—and in his wife’s reaction. To this day, they still laugh about his flea-ridden REO.