The Kind of Place That Speaks for Itself

Did you ever hear a house talking? Well, I did.

It told me that it has three bedrooms, a wood-burning fireplace, hardwood floors and “an honest-to-goodness dining room.”

And--all in 90 seconds--it also told me, in a mellifluous male voice, that I could buy it for $378,000.

In Southern California, where real estate’s a hard sell, you’ve gotta have a gimmick. So, popping up on local lawns are signs identifying talking houses and telling passersby how to hear what they have to say.

Of course, everyone knows that only haunted houses talk. In the case of the house quoted above--a little Country English number in Sunset Park with clinging vines and white picket fence--it’s done with a transmitter.

A computerized unit about the size of an answering machine is in the house. To listen, one parks out front and tunes the car radio to a dead FM band, as the sign instructs.

Mike Delamater of Fred Sands, co-agent on the Sunset Park house, has had talking houses for about two months--”It’s kind of an experiment.” While not overwhelmed with calls, he has found, “the people who do call are really interested,” not just looky-loos.

Andrew Milder, distributor of the Talking House in the L.A. area through Business Broadcast Systems, says it offers a real plus for prospective buyers: “They don’t have to call up and listen to somebody whose job it is to sell them a house.”

Father of Invention

Stanley Mason gave us the squeezable ketchup bottle, the form-fitting disposable diaper and Velcro. Now, aspiring inventors, let him give you a few do’s and don’ts live .

At 71, Mason, a former Fullerton resident who now lives in Connecticut, is busy salon-testing a lye-free hair relaxer for black women. “Retirement is really a stupid idea,” he told a standing-room-only audience at a West Hollywood lecture sponsored by the Learning Annex.

And then he offered some advice for those who’ve built a better mousetrap and want to snare a big corporate backer. Mason--who’s been known to get up to $50,000 a month from clients such as Johnson’s Wax to develop new products--gave these tips:

* Find niches, then invent a product to fill them. “Don’t invent stuff and then go try to sell it.”

* “Ideas don’t mean anything. It’s whether or not you can actually do it, or get somebody to do it for you.”

* Once you tell everybody about your idea, it’s their idea. “I don’t show anything to anybody unless I have a patent applied for.”

* “Never give prospective customers anything to read while you’re talking.”

* “Don’t work on complicated things. The best products are the simplest products . . . made in the simplest way.”

* Make sure you’re not reinventing the wheel. “I have invented things that I thought were terrific that were invented 50 years ago. It’s pretty dumb to work on things that have no value.”

* Sit down at your word processor and print yourself a fancy letterhead. And don’t write in until you have a product and a business plan. “Most mail that companies get is answered, or tossed out, by some unqualified mail room person.”

* What about companies that advertise that they’ll help you develop and patent your product? Says Mason: “In all my experience, not one of those companies ever gave any value to anybody.” Anyone can get the same lists of companies at the public library, he says.

* Broke and need to get a patent? A patent attorney may settle for a share of the product “if you have a worthwhile product.”

* Oh, yes, one final reality: “Every once in a while, you hear of somebody getting a sock full of money, in cash (for an invention). I’ve never met one.”

Mason snoops in supermarket aisles, seeing which products he could do better. Among his ideas: a self-heating shave cream, an air freshener activated and deactivated when someone enters and leaves a room.

When Playtex came to him to develop an underwire bra, Mason went to the library and checked out books on suspension bridges. Then he designed the first plastic underwire.

Mason developed the first microwave cookware and test-marketed it in Anaheim. If you want to experiment, he suggests, “you should experiment in Los Angeles or Orange County. Everything new is accepted more easily here.”

For 13 years, he has been perfecting a two-piece flowerpot that prevents over-watering. Did you know, he asks, that 19 million U.S. households have more than 12 houseplants--and each of those households has at least one sickly, over-watered plant?

Overheard

Columnist/author Jim Murray, explaining the realities of book- promotion tours to guests at the Roundtable West luncheon:

“If the Bible came out today, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John would have to go on the Jay Leno show.”

Seen

On the rear of a late-model Volvo in a Beverly Hills parking lot, side-by-side bumper stickers: CLINTON/GORE and IF YOU CAN’T CHANGE YOUR MIND, ARE YOU SURE YOU STILL HAVE ONE?