McKinney is Smokin! Well, not for long.

Our City Council recently voted in a ban on cigarette smoking similar to Plano, Allen and Frisco. According to the McKinney Courier-Gazette, "The ordinance prohibits smoking in restaurants, parks, and private clubs, such as country clubs or fraternal clubs. Smoking is allowed in parking lots of parks, public sidewalks, homes that are not used as childcare facilities, tobacco shops, cars, and designated hotel and motel rooms. No more than 10 percent of hotel and motel rooms can be designated smoking rooms. All smoking rooms must be on the same floor, adjacent to the other smoking rooms and must require separate ventilation systems to prevent comingling of air in non-smoking rooms."

The first thing I thought when I read the article was, "Is there any way we can ban smoking inside people's houses?" I'm all for an individual's rights but as a Realtor, a smoked in house has a limited pool of prospective buyers. It is so difficult to get that smoke smell out of everything even when nobody has smoked in there for a while. Carpet can be replaced and walls can be repainted but I swear the sheet rock absorbs a ton of odor. I found a cool website that has some great suggestions on how to get smoke odor out of everything. They have a process for washing the sheet rock!

I've sometimes wondered, with all the niche marketing that's popular today, could a Realtor target market smokers? Could "Camel Puffing Cathy" or "McKinney's Marlboro Man, Mike" make find an audience?