Linda Dzierba with Dzierba Real Estate in Bloomington, Indiana, learned the hard way that you should always listen to your gut in the REO business.

She vividly remembers a time when she had just completed a cash-for-keys on a particular property. When she arrived at the property, she had a strange sensation—almost an internal warning telling her she shouldn’t enter. “Normally, I just open the door and walk in, but that little voice told me not to,” recalls Linda. “I unlocked the door and pushed it open—cockroaches literally rained down.”
Once Linda was able to get inside the home, she found cockroaches all over the floors, the ceilings, the stove and the walls. They were even “shut up in the refrigerator door,” she remembers.
“I just couldn’t believe the prior homeowners had just moved out of there. For every one you see there’s a hundred you don’t see!” she recalls.
In the end, an important REO lesson was learned: Always listen to your gut instincts.