My Time Ain't Money

So I take my client Autism-Boy out to see two rather humble abodes on the market. It's raining and I'm driving a loaner car from the garage that has the name of shop painted and plastered all over it. My car has been vandalized so now I'm driving around in a giant billboard with a car somewhere underneath.

It's a bad week. Taxes are due, money is tight - as in nonexistent; the rain is back, my car has got an owie and as much as I like rain, the sunshine before sure did feel good. I'm a miserable creature, feeling particularly foolish and like a big heaping failure-at-everything as I drive to pick the client up in the wet and dismal gray world.

Autism-Boy once told me he has a form of high-functioning Asperger's Syndrome, thus the nickname, which basically means he's a pain in the ass who is extremely cautious and afraid of everything - he generally pumps his foot on a brake pedal that's not there the whole time I'm driving, while maintaining an aura of intellectual superiority. Well, to his credit, he is a rather bright and interesting fellow even though he is absolutely convinced the world is ending. I don't exactly discourage him, which is my responsibility, but he does go on most of the time I am with him, creating something of a post-apocalyptic scenario Mad Max-style world vision of the future. The truth is I totally wimp out around this stuff and just end-up agreeing because I'm exhausted from arguing with all the gloom and doom - is the world coming to an end new information? He has no idea that while he's talking I'm telling myself a better story in my head, which these days for various reasons usually involves a bunny with cookies.The first place is none other than a goddamn modular home from the seventies next to a run-down cottage, all blissfully sinking into five soggy acres of abandoned farm land.

The moment I open the door of the double-wide, we're blasted with cold, musty air smelling of a thousand smoked cigarettes and mildew. I immediately start sneezing but am too caught up in imagining the scary old couple who once lived there, so I walk in before I know it.

I have a moderately large nose equipped with a ridiculously powerful sense of smell. I can often tell someone what they've had for breakfast but I had to stop revealing this "gift" as I end-up as an olfactory sideshow wherever I am, with a line of people asking me to sniff them. Why does everyone, upon smelling something horrible, offer it to me saying, "Oh this STINKS, here smell it?" So how did I find the air inside a mildewy old home? Let's just leave it at "too much information." I was practically bowled over. I think I could even smell the last meal cooked in the kitchen (smelled like reheated pizza and perhaps some fishsticks.)

I'm also quite allergic to mold so just after I smelled more than I wanted to, my nose seized-up and began to run. I've learned to keep tissue with me at all times, so I covered my mouth as I began to hack and cough. Autism-Boy smiles saying that's why he likes working with me - the built-in mold detector - and I struggle for a reason to say why I like working with him.

The inside of the home I would define as creepy-child-pornographer-meets-emphysema-research-and-development-facility, the kind of home where the sounds of belching and farting still reverberate with ghostly echoes, and the man of the house can be imagined spending most of his time with one hand down his pants. Parts of the ceiling are missing and the linoleum has warn through in the kitchen revealing what looks like cardboard. I peek outside the windows at the other structures and something in my mammalian survival instinct kicks in - I'm afraid. I can hear an imaginary audience screaming "Don't go in the barn!"

My client is unhappy, too, discovering that even in this meltdown your money still won't buy very much around here. We're out of there but it's too late - I'm going to be sick for days from all that I've inhaled. (In fact, it's been three days and I'm still sneezing as I write this.)

The next home we see is much better and I even begin to entertain the notion that this fellow might actually buy something after two years of looking. I've lost count of the houses we've visited but the one we're standing in outshines every experience. He gets very excited and begins to ask a lot of questions. It is a short-sale, which pretty much can suck, but I've closed a few and they are not insurmountable.

It's just a house but it has a nice yard and an "artist studio," which is basically four walls, a roof and a floor. It's also been fenced well and surprise-surprise, it is surrounded by open pasture land, so it's nice and private (easier to protect from the post-apocalyptic right-wingers coming to steal your organic vegetables.) We agree to meet back in two days with his wife.

The two days pass and for the first time in a long time, I'm feeling that perhaps...just maybe...there's a paycheck in my future.

I'm back again with them both. She's complaining that in the summer she might be able to smell manure from the open pastures, the very reason he liked the house. I'm starting to get that they will probably never agree, which explains why they are approaching their seventies and are still renting - this should have been my first clue. The real shocker comes when she informs me that upon reviewing their numbers once again, it turns out that he "made a mistake" and they can't really afford anything. After she says this I think my knees visibly wobble. I start wondering again if anybody needs a bartender out there - I'm a quick learner and I promise not to drink too much of the profits - really!

I can barely speak as I get back into the loaner billboard car and head home to figure out how to pay my bills. Autism-Boy refers me to a couple of websites for more research on how the U.S. dollar will be worthless soon and what to do to prepare for the violent survival free-for-all that's coming. I wonder if he sees any irony in the tons of my time he's wasted.

I think there's a misconception that Realtors have a lot of money and really just do this job because we like to pee in other people's houses. Alright, that last part's true.

Do You Know What Your Tree Did?

While visiting a house I have in escrow for a buyer, I heard the inevitable voice calling in that "woo-hoo" tone from over the fence to the east. I'm attempting to duck in and out, just doing my work quickly. I have to complete something called an Agent's Visual Inspection Disclosure as part of the disclosures given to the Buyer. It's when I get to tell the Buyer that the paint is cracked and the carpet is stained, as if he didn't notice already.

So, here's this neighbor, peering at me over the fence. She's a tad corpulent, with short hair and owl-like glasses.

"Is this your house? Do you know what your tree did to our yard?" she asks, accusingly.

"Well, the possibilities are endless," I say.

Exasperated: "Did you get the letter I sent to you." I reply, "Oh, this isn't my house - I'm the Buyer's Realtor."

"Well, did you get the letter I sent to your company?" She's armed - she's holding a rake. And it's rusty.

I'm not sure how to clarify this for her, so I say in my most patient tone, "Oh, you would have probably sent the letter to the Listing Agent. That's the agent selling the house for the owner. I'm the Buyer's Agent - I'm the agent for the person buying the house."

"Oh, I see," she responds dejectedly. "Well, this tree has just ruined our yard. Does your Buyer know about it yet?"

"No." I'm feeling the urge to chew my leg off.

"You should tell him. Get that letter from the agent," she orders and waddles away.

As soon as my Buyer appears, I tell him about her. He'll have to sign a Mrs. Kravitz Disclosure, pronto.

Den of No Equity

She lives in a house filled with filthy, post-goth teenagers addicted to cell phones. A cigarette is never far away. The pool remains covered despite the warm weather and the lawn needs to be weeded and mowed.

A young man stands before me. He is shirtless and his chest and stomach are covered with fine black hair that has grown back after a shaving about three weeks ago. Another stands at the end of the brick walk I must navigate to arrive at the porch. His hair is bleached blond and he’s wearing smeared purple and black eye shadow. As I walk around him, I notice that he has three handkerchiefs in his left, rear pocket: One yellow, one pink and one red, carefully twisted into tubes. In the infinitely small moment it takes to walk around and behind this individual, my mind calculates what sexual cues the placement and colors of the handkerchiefs might send to a gay male living in the Castro in the late 1970’s.

Sitting in the sunlight, the client smiles and smoke leaks through her teeth. She holds-up the paperwork I left with her to complete four weeks ago proudly and announces it’s almost ready. I think to myself that I must sell real estate because being a rodeo clown isn’t painful enough.

Please take this the wrong way: everyone is fucking nuts when it comes to selling or buying property. It is clear to me that it’s a hot bed of long-buried trauma triggers for most people, and Realtors are simply the sponges that suck up the dark psychic matter along with a few dollars, if we’re lucky.

How I have come to be standing here confronted with the abruptness of my current reality I am not exactly sure. Suffice to say it is the culmination of a lifetime of inconsistency; my constant hopping from one job or another, from firm to firm, navigating through the employment world in the survival, hand-to-mouth kind of way that befalls many of us who thought we were meant for much more luxurious circumstances that have failed to manifest despite all youthful presentiments to the contrary. Aim for the stars to land on the moon, and if you miss the moon, too, you might just end up in real estate.

I once imagined my days to be filled with witty encounters among the creative elite of the world, exchanging ideas, collaborating and amusing one another over trays of swank edibles, while we toasted one another to genius with glass of world-class champagne. Instead, I’m standing here, in a neighborhood at least two worlds away from the one I once dreamed. Instead of being dazzled at an art opening in New York, I’m staring with amazement the ashtray made of welded automobile parts that has replaced the abalone shell my client’s three teenage sons used to fill to the rim with cigarette butts. This new tray is full the same as its predecessor. This home is filled with items such as this malignant sculpture that serve as markers along the path of my clients self-sabotage. I’ve been subjected to the kind of anthropology found in the slices of daily human life that would give Margaret Mead the willies.

To say things are a mess in this house is only scratching the surface, which you wouldn't want to do. This is a short sale, or to the layman, the owner has over-mortgaged the property to the point that it is worth less than she owes. She’s done this with four of her properties. I’m helping her sell two. Lucky me.

Although it may sound contradictory, I do not speak here from a place of judgment; to the contrary, I understand perfectly that we all overextend ourselves in one way or the other in our lives and in fact, this boundary expanding behavior often does lead one to success. Nor do I judge how my client lives or the way in which she raises her children. Put simply, it’s just not my planet. So I feel very alien standing with her as she rubs the coagulating mascara from the corners of her eyes and says, “So get this. Last night I met a guy hot enough to fuck and wouldn’t you know it, this morning my ex decides he still loves and shows up while last night’s fuck’s still in my bed!”

I’m not sure how to respond. I wonder if the local community college has a Jerry Springer dialect adult ed evening class. I use a summarily rejected offer that I hold in my right hand as a sun visor and reply, “Yes, ironic, isn’t it?”

She then looks at her watch and tells me she must be going to pick up her just-adolescent daughter from Juvenile Hall and exclaims, “Luckily it’s only drug charges,” to which I respond, “Oh, good.”

She’s in quite a hurry, being late for leaving for her weekend getaway, a Narcotics Anonymous retreat.

I watch her as she climbs into her new-off-the-lot black SUV, aptly named the Dodge Excommunicator or something like that, and drives away playing a loud hip-hop song with a chorus that I swear is singing, “Go Fuck Yourself.” She flicks her cigarette out the window, and waves goodbye.

All of this has been so totally disorienting that I’ve completely forgot to tell her about her other short sale listing, the home on the river in which my client has allowed two of her friends, with a new baby and a pit-bull, along with a cast of guest stars to stay until it is sold. I’ve just received a call from a Realtor who described the scene she found when viewing the property as “uncomfortable.” Apparently, a motorcycle was under repair in the living room and as the potential buyers entered, they were also treated to a man scratching under boxer shorts, wandering out of the kitchen.

I promise myself I’ll search the net for rodeo clown openings as soon as I get home.

Gentlemen, May I Propose a Toast

Raise your drinks steadily and take a big swallow. There now - that's better.

I guess I believed writing down what it's like from the front lines was a good idea. The witch is falling and landing on your house, and this sure ain't Oz, either. The epicenter of the entire collapse was the real estate and accompanying mortgage loan industries, so feel as if I am merely an enlisted man, praying in my foxhole. Forgive me if I do it blog-style.

My, what a turbulent time its been. I thought maybe my stories, observations, new-knowledge-learned-on-the-fly and interpersonal experiences with clients might have some value, at least of the entertainment variety. On the job always (always), I am asked the same questions repeatedly, too. There is a lot of strain in the faces of my clients and friends right now, so no complaints here. My thinking is that putting it into this form might help centralize the anxiety a bit.

There really is no other way to begin this other than to say; if you own home or are thinking about getting into the market don't let them lie to you - its never been a sure thing and it never will be...as long as humans are involved.

Now, I'm also going to bash the hell out of the biz here, so if you're sensitive about that, don't read. Don't be mistaken - I actually love my job. I know many fine Realtors and they're not all a bad lot. In fact, being that special ingredient during a life transition for my clients is something I'm honored to do. It just that many Realtors have a facade they wear - the true salesman - and they can often seem impenetrable. I've actually done quite well for myself given the fact that I'm no salesman, not at all.



You'll never see my face on a shopping cart, billboard or at the movie theater. I do this job because I like to shop for houses and I can't buy them all myself. I enjoy helping people, and I like to set my own schedule. I'm not trying to be a top producer or a professional Mr. Handshake. Just another monkey doing a job and feeling humbled by some of the beauty of it, too. To me, it's more like being a healer but without the avant-garde Japanese pipe flute music.

Buying a house is one of the, if not the largest purchase most of us will ever make. Lets face it - the process can bring up one's shit, send you into homes that look like good places for murder/suicides and force one to midwife to the point where I feel that I'm in labor. I'm alright with all of that.

So, I've made a place to dump all the energy and information my career dumps on me. I'm suggesting a new way to play an old game. I'm not going to be perpetually perky, glossy or irritatingly positive. I'm going to do something that fights the stigma that Real Estate people are dishonest - I'm going to be brutally honest with you.

Some of my colleagues may audibly groan upon hearing that but to them, I say - get real. We wouldn't need so many damn forms if real estate had always been an honest business.