The Housing Bubble

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by NY City Boy

In Arlington Memorial Cemetery there is an eternal flame. It flickers and flashes and burns on through daytime and nighttime. That flame does not care if the sun is shining or the sky is filled with rain. It does not ask the calendar if it is Sunday or Monday or Arbor Day. It just burns on. In the corners of my heart there is a flame of another kind. It is the flame of dislike for all things that touch real estate. It is a flame that burns bright and strong. It is a flame that will fuel my eternal boycott of the real estate game for the rest of my waking moments, and beyond. That flame does not take names and it does not take prisoners.

It was a clear, beautiful day in March of 2005. I would say it was during the winter time but this was in the South. They do not get much of what I would call “winter”, especially by my standards of what I grew up with. My wife and I had decided it was time to up and leave our comfortable southern house. It was big. It was vinyl. It was not making me happy. We needed something more from life. We needed to have some fun and excitement.

The genesis of that decision had been our decision to not have little NYCityBoys and girls running around. We looked at all of the “joy” of the kid crowd and decided that maybe it was not for us. That became a problem. We had moved into a neighborhood that was completely centered around the patter of little feet.

To live in a neighborhood that is focused on kids, when you don’t have any kids, is much like being the sober guy at the bar at 2:00 in the morning. At least I think it is. I have never actually been that guy but I am sure I have driven many of those guys to near violence. My life in the cul-de-sac has allowed me to imagine what it must be like to be that guy. You know there is some kind of party going on. You also know that you just do not fit in with the rest of the crowd. Perhaps we could develop neighborhoods that specifically forbid kids. They would be like the no-smoking sections of the old days, say 1992. That way you could know what you are getting into before buying. I think the neighborhoods without kids would be a lot more fun. It is too bad that the only way to get into such a neighborhood is to be in your blue hair, no ass with high pants stage of life.

Upon deciding to sell our slice of The American Dream we did what every well trained drone does. We searched for a real estate agent. I could not just call the guy that had sold our townhouse because my wife did not like him. She thought he was a little too slick. I told her, “he’s a f—ing real estate agent, for god’s sake. What do you expect?” I had liked him because he and I agreed on aggressively pricing the place and we got it sold quickly. I think it took about eight days. My wife thought we had “given it away”. I tried to tell her that this was not the case but sooner rather than later I had given up on that argument.

While searching for a real estate agent I did not take it as seriously as I should have. This was 2005 and the market was still strong. We were in a new development and we had a large house. We could price it right and get it sold. I told my wife, “any idiot could sell this”. Boy, was I wrong.

We found a local real estate agent on the Internet. She had what looked like the stereotypical real estate agent look. She was blonde. She didn’t look like she would be working on any NASA launches any time soon but I figured all I needed was somebody to list the house, take a few pictures and follow up on offers. I could train one of the cats to do that. Oops. I should not have typed that. One of them was looking over my shoulder as I was typing. She is pretty pissed off that I just lumped her in with a real estate agent. I will be sleeping with one eye open tonight.

We met with the real estate agent. Of course she pulled up driving a Mercedes. I rolled my eyes at that. We spoke with her for about half an hour. She seemed nice. It seemed like she understood the area. That was enough for us. We were in a hurry to get out of cul-de-sac purgatory and figured this should work. After all we were dream customers. We were committed to selling quickly. We told her we absolutely did not want to overprice the place. We wanted a quick sale and that should be music to any real estate agent’s ears.

We started talking about getting the place sold. My wife had painted some of the walls with colors that she had liked. We asked if we should paint the walls back to white. She assured us that this was not necessary. I was skeptical but I agreed. I guess I was just thinking about the fact that I was glad to get an answer that didn’t involve me doing anything with blue tape or a roller. We talked about pricing. I think we, at first, thought that the place could be priced around $315,000. That was more than we paid two years earlier. I would have gone even lower but I remembered the “giving it away” comments with the townhouse. Our agent, I will call her Babs (in honor of Babs Cocker-ham or whatever her name is) from here on out. Babs told us that she thought we could price at $330,000 and still get a quick sale. I do not remember if our eyes lit up with dollar signs but I am sure that we were like any other people. We liked hearing the words “quick sale” attached to the $330,000 number. So, we agreed to price it at that level. Based upon what was still selling in the neighborhood it seemed reasonable. We mentioned that we would lower the price quickly if it did not sell. That was agreed upon. We signed a six month contract with Babs. When she left everybody seemed to be happy.

A few days later our house was on the market. Babs told us our listing was up on the MLS. Babs brought a “For Sale” sign to put in the yard. She also brought a little box with flyers that went out by the driveway. We had cleaned the house from top to bottom. Let me pause for a moment here. Anybody that has ever had a house in shape to be shown knows how awful it is to keep it like that. It is like living in a model home. Knowing this I can never understand why anybody would want to allow their house to just fester on the market month after month. Perhaps they quit cleaning. But we had gotten our house into shape to be shown. I even told the cats to try to be less messy since we were trying to sell the place. They just laughed and told me to, “go f— yourself”. The cats are not really what I would call “team players”.

Our listing was on the Internet in a flash. I went out and found it. I noticed two things. The pictures that had been taken looked like absolute crap. The price reflected the first price we talked about, not the higher price. I pointed these things out to Babs. I should have known something was wrong when I was talking to her on the phone and I could hear the wind rushing through her ears. She apologized for the pricing mistake. She said the pictures were just fine. I knew that was a dead end. I just hoped it would not sink us.

The calls for showings began on the first day the house was listed. I had already completed my time at work, and was not ready to head to New York, so I had an opportunity to be at home and keep the place clean. Our first showing was slated for early in the afternoon. I was at home cleaning and hoped to get out of the house about twenty minutes before the showing. This would give the cats the least amount of time to do any damage. As it turned out the real estate agent and the prospective couple showed up very early. I was still in the house. The real estate agent apologized and told me they were running early. She said I could stay. I did not think she was serious. I told her I would get out of the way and go across the street to talk to my neighbor.

The couple was in the house for a little while. It may have been twenty minutes. I did not speak to them. They pulled away and the real estate agent stayed behind a couple minutes. She came over and talked to me. She said that it was early in their search and they had not made any decisions. It was clear they did not love it. She then told me she had to show me something. I asked what it was. She had one of the flyers in her hand. Babs had not printed up new flyers. She had just put a small label over the initial price. If you turned the flyer over you could see the old price and that the figure had been raised. That was embarrassing.

I called Babs and got the reaction to which I would become so familiar. She treated it like it was no big deal. These things happened. I cursed to my wife and started to wonder if this idiot was too much of an idiot to sell our house.

The days passed and our house stayed on the market. I moved to New York City while my wife stayed behind. The showings were racking up. I would try to talk to Babs and ask her if we should lower the price. She would say, “no. We just need to be patient.”

The miracle of the Internet allowed us to see what the many visitors to our house were thinking. Some complained about the size of the lot. I could not do anything about that. Some said they did not like our neighbor’s pool. That was out of control at this point. I also noticed that the teenage daughter was now having people over in the afternoon to swim. They blasted the crappiest music known to man. That was frustrating. Remember what I wrote about neighborhoods without kids. The other little rascals in the neighborhood can have a huge impact when you try to sell. Some complained about, drum roll please, the customized paint colors. It was becoming clear to me that this was screaming one thing to me. It was yelling, “lower the price”. People might be willing to tolerate these things but not at the current price.

My wife finalized her work transfer and moved to New York. The cats relocated with her. The house sat empty. The showings continued. My frustration level was rising.

I now had to have a long distance relationship with Babs. My frustration continued to grow. We would hear from her sporadically. I would have to try to track her down. One day I spoke to her and told her we needed regular updates since we were now dealing with an empty house. She said she would do her best but she was very busy. I had to check that out. I looked at her site on the Internet. She had a listing for some raw land. She had two other listings for some run-down houses. Neither house was listed at even half of the price of our house. I could not believe my eyes.

She should have been treating us like royalty. Instead she was tough to get a hold of and she still would not lower the price. I could not understand this. The only thing I could think is that she was dumb enough to want to maximize her commission even if it took longer. She actually told me everything was going well. Her reasoning was that we had had a lot of showings. I reminded her we did not have a single offer to consider and it had been two months. It was clear that we were priced too high. We needed to lower it and get it sold.

The communication from Babs became less and less frequent. Finally I had had enough. My wife was at the same spot. I told her we were going to kick Babs’ worthless dye job to the curb and hire the agent that had sold our last place. My wife, putting her past thoughts aside, told me to make the call.

I made the call immediately and told him the situation. We still had our contract. He told me we should be able to get out of it. I called Babs and told her I was firing her. She told me that we still had a contract. I told her she was a complete incompetent and that if she fought me on it I would do whatever it took to get away from her. She finally agreed to release the listing but we would have to pay her $600 for her marketing efforts. I did not know what efforts to which she was referring. Perhaps those little labels were more expensive than they looked.

The new (old) agent and I discussed what we needed to do with the house. The first thing he said was, “those walls have to be painted”. I swore a few times and agreed with him. He told me he could find a guy to do the painting. It would be $1,800. I told him to do it as soon as possible. He said he would take photos and create a panoramic presentation. He sent somebody over and they did a beautiful job of it. He said that we should lower the price. I agreed and got the price down to where it had to be. My wife did not object at all. She did bring up the idea of renting it out at one point. I think I slept alone that night after I snapped her head off about, “there is no f—ing way I’m going to be a long distance landlord”.

Babs was still not gone. She would not release the listing until our check had cleared. I could not believe it. She had stopped taking my calls. I know I left her a couple choice voice mails. I hope she kept them. I would like to hear them some day. She was like an STD that would not go away easily. But finally she did. Our check cleared and I was free of Babs for the rest of my life.

Within two weeks our house was sold. We lowered the price again during negotiations and I heard some grumbling from my wife. I think she knew enough not to continue to question it. She did not dare use the words “give it away” on this one. She knew that I just wanted to be rid of that headache.

I did not just get rid of a house. I got rid of Sundays doing yard work. I got rid of witnessing the neighbor’s kids go through their teenage years at their pool while the hip-hop blasted. I got rid of having no flexibility to look for a job where I wanted to look for a job. I got rid of being over $250,000 in debt and feeling like I had to go to work every day and say, “yes sir” because I was a debt slave. I got rid of a lot of things. I got back a sense of freedom and that was worth its weight in platinum. I was all smiles.

The moment I sold that boat anchor was the day I began my eternal boycott. It was my independence day from the scam that is known as “the real estate market”. I could state from that day forth that I never again wanted to deal with a real estate agent. I never again wanted to deal with a mortgage broker. I never wanted to have a house for sale. I never wanted to have to fight with my wife about the nickels and dimes that were paid on the house. Renting is not throwing my money away any more than eating a steak, instead of ramen noodles, is throwing money away.

I will gladly sign over a check to my landlord for the opportunity to pass along all problems onto him or her or whatever. Today I received an email that a good friend in the North Carolina mountains had a basement full of water. I spoke to a colleague in Atlanta and he had pumped 250 gallons of water out of his basement in the past few days. Their tales make me feel bad for them but they make me feel wonderful that I have not bought into the fairy tale that owning a house is the American Dream. I know many people with kids feel they have to own a house. I can understand that. But for me I will choose freedom for the rest of my life. Take that six percent and shove it where nothing seems to shine. You will never see a dime from me.

(Note: My old house languishes on the market. It has been “For Sale” for more than a year now. The current owners do not share my philosophy of “lower the price and get it sold”. I guess they like having an empty house. Perhaps I should give them Babs’ number. It seems they were made for each other.)

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