Broken Chandeliers and Oven Fires: What Happens When a Real-Estate Pro Damages a Listing?

Have you ever accidentally damaged a client’s home?

Debby Belt, senior associate, Hammond Residential Real Estate, Chestnut Hill, Mass.

I was representing the seller of a four-bedroom Cape Cod-style home in Newton, Mass., just west of Boston. It was May 2016 and the house was listed for $929,000. It had a beautiful kitchen, with wood cabinets, granite countertops and stainless-steel appliances.

The house went under contract, and it was scheduled for a home inspection. I wanted the house to look pristine for the inspector and buyers, but the kitchen counters were cluttered, so I frantically threw things into drawers, and I put some glassware, baking tins and plates into the oven. When the inspector walked into the kitchen, he turned on the oven to test it without looking inside first. I was in another room at the time, but I smelled something burning, and then heard explosions as the glass shattered.

When I ran into the kitchen, I saw smoke and a small fire in the oven. There was broken glass all over the place, and the kitchen was smoky. Since it was a gas oven, it could have been much worse. The oven was damaged, and the seller wasn’t happy, so I gave her a $500 discount on the commission to offset any damage or credits she would have to give to the buyers. The buyers weren’t too upset, fortunately, because they were probably planning to update the appliances. The home ended up selling for $920,000 with the oven not functioning perfectly. Now, when I meet the inspector, we both still laugh about it.

Jeffrey Kahn, broker, Broker Associates Realty, The Villages, Fla.

In 1995, early in my real-estate career, I was representing the seller of a condominium in a luxury high-rise building on the ocean in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, just north of Fort Lauderdale. My seller had the mistaken impression that the dining room chandelier was excluded from the sale, so she had it taken down just before closing and replaced it with a less-expensive fixture.

When we did the walk-through the day before closing, the buyer noticed that the original chandelier, which was about 3 feet wide and custom-made from oyster shells and glass on a wrought-iron frame, was missing and, since the contract said that the unit was being sold furnished with everything included in the sale we needed to rectify the situation. The buyer was refusing to close because she loved the chandelier, and my commission—about $30,000, which I was going to split with the other agent—was in jeopardy. The original chandelier was packed in a box on the dining room table, and to make the deal happen, I told the seller I would replace her chandelier with a comparable one if we would rehang the original.

It wasn’t a difficult chandelier, and I’ve done a lot of electrical work in my own homes, so I took down the one hanging from the ceiling. As I started to remove the oyster-glass chandelier from the box, a hairless Sphynx cat jumped on the glass dining room table and rubbed against me. I had never seen a cat in the apartment during the entire listing process, so it scared the heck out of me. I dropped the chandelier, which broke, and I ended up having to pay $8,000 for two new chandeliers and electrician fees. Thankfully, the unit sold for $978,000 and my commission was sufficient to cover the costs. I was just happy the glass dining-room table didn’t break because then my whole commission would have been gone.

Joshua Garner, real-estate agent, The Agency, New York City

In October 2022, I was representing the owner of a Classic Seven co-op on the Upper East Side that was listed for $3.1 million. It had three bedrooms and 2,575 square feet of classic prewar details, with 13 windows and high ceilings. It also had the most particular seller ever. She trusted no one but myself to open up and show the apartment, and it took no less than 30 minutes to prepare and close up each time. There was a written checklist I had to follow, in a specific order, that included the proper angle at which to pull the string for the blinds, how to pick up and strategically fold, stack and put away the series of white sheets she had laid out as runners to protect the bedroom carpets and wearing shoe covers and gloves. She would watch everything from Switzerland via her security cameras and would call me to correct the smallest details.

Prospective buyers were told not to touch anything and to stay on designated walking areas, which were placed a distance from the Ming vases. If they wanted to see the interior of a cupboard or closet, I would refer to myself as Vanna White and would respond to what they instructed. I always warned them ahead of time that she was probably watching and that anything they said or did would be recorded. Buyers would enter with their guard up, which made it difficult. One day, after a showing, I couldn’t get one of the blinds to lower properly. I panicked, but I notified her immediately, and she had a maintenance worker inspect it. The cord had come off the internal spool, and even though it was a quick fix, the seller was livid and ready to withdraw the exclusive.

The only thing that saved the listing was offering to pay $300 to fully replace the mechanism to restore it to new condition. Although there were incidents that upset her during other showings, thankfully, nothing else was ever broken. This co-op, which ended up closing for $2.95 million in October 2023, was the most high-stakes deal I ever worked on.

—Edited from interviews by Robyn A. Friedman

James and Ellen Patterson are hardly Luddites. But the couple, who both work in tech, made an unexpectedly old-timey decision during the renovation of their 1928 Washington, D.C., home last year.

The Pattersons had planned to use a spacious unfinished basement room to store James’s music equipment, but noticed that their children, all under age 21, kept disappearing down there to entertain themselves for hours without the aid of tablets or TVs.

Inspired, the duo brought a new directive to their design team.

The subterranean space would become an “analog room”: a studiously screen-free zone where the family could play board games together, practice instruments, listen to records or just lounge about lazily, undistracted by devices.

For decades, we’ve celebrated the rise of the “smart home”—knobless, switchless, effortless and entirely orchestrated via apps.

But evidence suggests that screen-free “dumb” spaces might be poised for a comeback.

Many smart-home features are losing their luster as they raise concerns about surveillance and, frankly, just don’t function.

New York designer Christine Gachot said she’d never have to work again “if I had a dollar for every time I had a client tell me ‘my smart music system keeps dropping off’ or ‘I can’t log in.’ ”

Google searches for “how to reduce screen time” reached an all-time high in 2025. In the past four years on TikTok, videos tagged #AnalogLife—cataloging users’ embrace of old technology, physical media and low-tech lifestyles—received over 76 million views.

And last month, Architectural Digest reported on nostalgia for old-school tech : “landline in hand, cord twirled around finger.”

Catherine Price, author of “ How to Break Up With Your Phone,” calls the trend heartening.

“People are waking up to the idea that screens are getting in the way of real life interactions and taking steps through design choices to create an alternative, places where people can be fully present,” said Price, whose new book “ The Amazing Generation ,” co-written with Jonathan Haidt, counsels tweens and kids on fun ways to escape screens.

From both a user and design perspective, the Pattersons consider their analog room a success.

Freed from the need to accommodate an oversize television or stuff walls with miles of wiring, their design team—BarnesVanze Architects and designer Colman Riddell—could get more creative, dividing the space into discrete music and game zones.

Ellen’s octogenarian parents, who live nearby, often swing by for a round or two of the Stock Market Game, an eBay-sourced relic from Ellen’s childhood that requires calculations with pen and paper.

In the music area, James’s collection of retro Fender and Gibson guitars adorn walls slicked with Farrow & Ball’s Card Room Green , while the ceiling is papered with a pattern that mimics the organic texture of vintage Fender tweed.

A trio of collectible amps cluster behind a standing mic—forming a de facto stage where family and friends perform on karaoke nights. Built-in cabinets display a Rega turntable and the couple’s vinyl record collection.

“Playing a game with family or doing your own little impromptu karaoke is just so much more joyful than getting on your phone and scrolling for 45 minutes,” said James.

The Patterson family’s basement retreat ‘encapsulates the joy in the things that we love in one room.’ John Cole

Screen-Free ‘Escapes’

“Dumb” design will likely continue to gather steam, said Hans Lorei, a designer in Nashville, Tenn., as people increasingly treat their homes “less as spaces to optimise and more as spaces to retreat.”

Case in point: The top-floor nook that designer Jeanne Hayes of Camden Grace Interiors carved out in her Connecticut home as an “offline-office” space.

Her desk? A periwinkle beanbag chair paired with an ottoman by Jaxx. “I hunker down here when I need to escape distractions from the outside world,” she explained.

“Sometimes I’m scheming designs for a project while listening to vinyl, other times I’m reading the newspaper in solitude. When I’m in here without screens, I feel more peaceful and more productive at the same time—two things that rarely go hand in hand.”

A subtle archway marks the transition into designer Zoë Feldman’s Washington, D.C., rosy sunroom—a serene space she conceived as a respite from the digital demands of everyday life.

Used for reading and quiet conversation, it “reinforces how restorative it can be to be physically present in a room without constant input,” the designer said.

Laura Lubin, owner of Nashville-based Ellerslie Interiors, transformed a tiny guest bedroom in her family’s cottage into her own “wellness room,” where she retreats for sound baths, massages and reflection.

“Without screens, the room immediately shifts your nervous system. You’re not multitasking or consuming, you’re just present,” said Lubin.

As a designer, she’s fielding requests from clients for similar spaces that support mental health and rest, she said.

“People are overstimulated and overscheduled,” she explained. “Homes are no longer just places to live—they’re expected to actively support well-being.”

Designer Molly Torres Portnof of New York’s DATE Interiors adopted the same brief when she designed a music room for her husband, owner of the labels Greenway Records and Levitation, in their Lido Beach, N.Y. home. He goes there nightly to listen to records or play his guitar.

The game closet from the townhouse in “The Royal Tenenbaums”? That idea is back too, says Gachot. Last year she designed an epic game room backed by a rock climbing wall for a young family in Montana.

When you’re watching a show or on your phone, “it’s a solo experience for the most part,” the designer said. “The family really wanted to encourage everybody to do things together.”

Analog Accessories

Don’t have the space—or the budget—to kit out an entire retro rec room?

“There are a lot of small tweaks you can make even if you don’t have the time, energy or budget to design a fully analog room from scratch,” said Price.

Gachot says “the small things in people’s lives are cues of what the bigger trends are.”

More of her clients, she’s noticed, have been requesting retrograde staples, such as analog clocks and magazine racks.

For her Los Angeles living room, chef Sara Kramer sourced a vintage piano from Craigslist to be the room’s centerpiece, rather than sacrifice its design to the dominant black box of a smart TV. Alabama designer Lauren Conner recently worked with a client who bought a home with a rotary phone.

Rather than rip it out, she decided to keep it up and running, adding a silver receiver cover embellished with her grandmother’s initials.

Some throwback accessories aren’t so subtle. Melia Marden was browsing listings from the Public Sale Auction House in Hudson, N.Y. when she spotted a phone booth from Bell Systems circa the late 1950s and successfully bid on it for a few hundred dollars.

“It was a pandemic impulse buy,” said Marden.

In 2023, she and her husband, Frank Sisti Jr., began working with designer Elliot Meier and contractor ReidBuild to integrate the booth into what had been a hallway linen closet in their Brooklyn townhouse.

Canadian supplier Old Phone Works refurbished the phone and sold them the pulse-to-tone converter that translates the rotary dial to a modern phone line.

The couple had collected a vintage whimsical animal-adorned wallpaper (featured in a different colourway in “Pee-wee’s Playhouse”) and had just enough to cover the phone booth’s interior.

Their children, ages 9 and 11, don’t have their own phones, so use the booth to communicate with family. It’s also become a favorite spot for hiding away with a stack of Archie comic books.

The booth has brought back memories of meandering calls from Marden’s own youth—along with some of that era’s simple joy. As Meier puts it: “It’s got this magical wardrobe kind of feeling.”