Realtor®s…or is it Realtors®?
[A pause: I’ve finished the novel, finally, and Nancy has read it and made cogent comments, so I’ll revise a little bit. She said she didn’t want it to end! Anyone else interested in reading it?
[I may actually get my nerves drunk and query some agents.
[In the meantime, I’m going to try to write more blog posts. Though almost no one read the obituary for Cherry Cho Chang Potter, the Chinese Fighting Dog. Please go back one post and click on it. Dog obituaries are what I do best. The woman who cuts my hair said it made her cry. She has a Great Dane named Porter.]
When I raise some terrible thing that happened years ago, Kate will ask me how long ago this happened, a pointed comment to the effect that I need to get over it.
I can’t. Especially not with real estate agents, brokers, whatever they call themselves. It generally doesn’t matter as I suspect that they don’t mind a conflict of interest or two. One thing I know is that they’re inordinately proud of the “®” after the word “realtor.” Big deal.
Now Ohio State is allowed to do that with “THE ®”. As in THE® Ohio State University. Unless that was just a joke on AbovetheLaw.com. I don’t see the designation on their website.
I don’t think that among my many (LOLOLOL) readers there exist any realtors, but, if so, I apologize in advance.
Back to realtors. I think they are probably below literary agents (who at least can read) and above used car salespersons (who may or may not be literate).
My main complaint is that Realtors® have had fixed prices on commissions for decades, and, despite litigation initiated by the Department of Justice and various private plaintiffs, nothing much has changed. The price fixing was set as of the turbulent 1940’s, and it was only challenged post-war.
Now, however, just try to find some policy as to fixed commissions in writing. It’s just baked into the culture: each agent gets 3% or thereabouts. Think about that for the average house where I live: That’s about $60,000 deducted from our sale price. For how much effort? Please.
And spare me the argument that my AIG Life insurance president used to make about our insurance agents: they essentially wake up unemployed. No one put a gun to their heads to force them to be insurance agents. They all drive high-end vehicles. Not subtle optics, kids.
The pinnacle of my life will be to put our house on the market and send a letter to all of the Realtors ® in the area and say, what’s the lowest commission you can give me? And if you say 3%, I’m going to sue all of you fuckers in antitrust.
Wow, you’re wondering, what’s going on here? Why the anger, the vitriol? Or you’ve quit reading, a highly commendable plan of action. I’m sure there’s a good baseball game on. I’m probably watching one as you stop reading this.
I’ll tell you why this is an enduring grudge for me. But first, a typical story about me, worthy of the overriding theme of this blog that I don’t know what I’m doing.
A Realtor® I happened to know found out about the writing business I ran for lawyers, The Practical Legal Writer LLC (no ®, no nothing.) He thought it might work well for Realtors ® if I revised it accordingly. Our next door neighbor Mike Spence, a real estate lawyer, knew Glenn Bell, at the time the chief or president or whatever of the Washington Association of Realtors®, or WAR.
Mike got me in touch with Mr. Bell, a real gentleman and an English major, and as such he was enthusiastic, and I worked up a writing course for the WAR. After a couple of revisions, he approved it, and WAR listed it on their courses available. I was engaged by some nice woman in Moses Lake and someone else on Whidbey Island.
Ever been to Moses Lake? I’m surprised that anyone wants to buy a house out there. It’s a wind-howling truck stop of a town. I spent the night out there, wishing I had a gun for whatever threatened. There was passable Chinese take-out, but that’s true in all but about 2% of American towns. The night before the class, I did the responsible thing, scouting out where I would be presenting—a typical kind of community gathering place. Walk around the corner to find the senior center.
When I showed up the next day, there was a suitably enthusiastic group (when has a Realtor ® not been enthusiastic?) of about 20. They were all told to turn off their cell phones or they’d be fined $50 if one rang. If I suspect I’m going to make tens of thousands simply for answering my phone, I think I’d risk it.
Anyway, duly I taught my class. They were more responsive than lawyers, but that’s a terribly low bar. I was gladdened to hear that, by some local bylaw, I wasn’t going to have to teach as long as I was planning—something about not taking breaks. Who needs a break?
But we did take one, and I betook myself to the men’s room. On the way back, I heard one attendee say to another, “This isn’t what I was expecting, how about you?” I darted quickly past so as to avoid the answer, but now I wish I’d lingered behind a column. What, pray, were they expecting?
To end this nightmare, we did not take our expected breaks (I have no memory of what happened with lunch), and I drove out of there at top speed and listened to the Cleveland Guardians (ne Indians) play the Colorado Rockies on the radio. (Is that even possible? My cursory Internet research turns up no such game. It’s possible that I was suffering from PTSD.) I made a shockingly early ferry and called it a win.
The evaluations were not encouraging. One suggested that I honor my audience by affixing the ® to each use of Realtor. Forgotten and annoying student, this I have done tonight.
I judged the effort and humiliation to be too much work for the money and canceled the class on Whidbey Island. The person in charge thanked me for the notice. Really? People cancel without notice?
Glenn Bell had retired, so I reluctantly told his staff that as the students didn’t seem interested in the material, I would not be teaching any more classes. They responded with a deathly silence, no doubt annoyed quite rightly that they’d gone to so much trouble for so little.
Oh well. It was not the first nor certainly not the last time that I have disappointed someone.
But then, then, I had been disappointed mightily some 18 years earlier by a Realtor®. Nancy and I left our horrible jobs in Greensboro (I’m looking at you, Brooks Pierce and the cannibalized corpse of Adams Kleemeier) for in-house jobs in the Research Triangle Park part of North Carolina, in the Durham-Raleigh-Chapel Hill area.
We found a house to buy in a charming part of Durham called Trinity Park, near Duke’s east campus and just north of the downtown. We could hear baseball games at Durham Athletic Park in the summer (Bull Durham, perhaps the best baseball movie ever, was filmed there in part). The house was enormous, three stories, and leaked cold air like a barn. But it was quirky; the basement was actual dirt.
We made an offer contingent on our selling our house in Greensboro—we were in no financial shape to carry two mortgages. But the Realtor ®, someone associated with a realty called Marie Austin, told us no, that the sellers had already bought a house in New York and couldn’t carry two mortgages.
I can’t believe how stupid we were. We said OK and went to closing fully expecting to carry two mortgages—but not for long, right? Our house in Greensboro was sure to sell quickly at a nice profit, so we bought the Durham house for about twenty thousand more.
I forget how this came up at closing. Somehow someone (me?) mentioned the seller’s mortgage on our house, and the lawyer said, “Oh, they don’t have a mortgage on your house.”
My head nearly exploded. They didn’t? They weren’t carrying two mortgages?
Marie Austin or her agent had outright lied to us. I wish I’d had the nerve to claim fraud right then and walk away. But I have always been a wimp, and Nancy was, if anything, worse than I am, though now she’s always telling me to take this or that aggressive position.
We closed on that leaky barn, which also later leaked mice. It took forever to sell our Greensboro house, which, after taking into account improvements we made, sold at a loss.
Conclusion: Marie Austin is a bald-faced liar. If Realtors® aren’t lying, they’re committing antitrust violation and apparently have a very effective lobby. I hope they try to sue me in defamation. Truth is an absolute defense.
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