Realtors Urge Agents to Eat Cat Food

If your real estate agent’s car smells a little fishy, there may be a good reason for it.

The Greater Nashville Association of Realtors, reacting to the tanking real estate market, has put forth several ideas to help struggling agents make ends meet, and one of them involves saving money by eating cat food.

“I’ve heard that cat food, especially some of the tuna flavors, is really not too bad if it’s prepared well,” says Richard Courtney, president of the association. “So we arranged to buy a bulk shipment and make it available to our members at cost. This isn’t store-brand or generic stuff—we want our people to have high-end cat food.”

The association is also providing a copy of Cooking With Cat Food, which Amazon.com describes as the “bible of preparing cat food for human consumption.”

Several months ago, as the housing market began to get soft, the association began urging its members to use tandem bicycles to ferry prospects from house to house—a scheme that would surely save gas money but has failed to catch on.

Courtney says his trade group is also passing other economy tips on to its members.

“We advise people who are having trouble to sell unneeded furniture, such as, for example, a seldom-used dining room table. We also advise them to cut back on lighting in their houses to save on electricity.”

If the image of a real estate agent eating cat food while standing in a darkened kitchen is a little grim, Courtney puts the best face on the scene.

“With the price of gas and the price of food, we’re all having to cut back,” Courtney says. “We just want our people to have the tools to survive this market, and this is one of them.”